Transform Into A Media Company

Social Media is huge today and it doesn’t take a genius to know that. Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and becoming more popular. It’s easy for a person to have a personal social media account but it’s not easy when you have to handle a social account for a company.

Creating content is one of the most important factors behind a social media account. Every company is different and a media company has to strategically assign roles and content to the right people. It crucial to properly assign editorial roles and certain responsibilities to those who are capable of building a company’s content strategy.

A company can’t just become a social media company over night. It takes attitude, thinking, and behavioral change. The company has to execute its brand story the same through every social media platform. It’s more than just social media because all forms of communication need to be incorporated into becoming a media company. A brand needs to use paid, earned, and owned media in order to target its audience.

A company undergoes a transformation when it changes its business strategy. This may include communication within the company. The brand has to reach audiences differently in goal of engaging them with the brands new message. Now there may be resistance among employees when attempting to change business strategy. It’s possible that some employees may feel threatened by change because it generates fear about their job status and security. People shouldn’t be too worried because there are several jobs to consider when choosing to build its team.

10 JOB ROLES TO CONSIDER:

1. Chief Content Officer

2. Managing Editor

3. Editors

4. Community Managers

5. Brand Journalists

6. External Contributors

7. Analysts

8. Administrators

9. Contributors

10. Customer Support

Everyone on the team should be responsible for content operations.

Once the team is built, it’s time to execute content. Content governance is what is behind a successful media company. It’s a strategic imperative when deploying an enterprise-wide content strategy for four purposes which are:

1. establishing content and workflow accountability

2. auditing content engagements

3. managing risk

4. setting content permissions

Everyone on the team is responsible for telling the brand’s story. The brand story has to be consistent via paid, earned, and owned media.

Content governance is more than a strategic plan it also entails management of the brand. Meaning there should be collaboration models, approval for content, customer support, password control, and managing when employees leave the company. When collaborating there should be elements that are followed:

1. Brainstorming

2. Collaborating and Creating

3. Sharing and Distributing

4. Broadcasting

Picking the right team and executing content with a strategic plan will make the transformation into a media company easier. It does however take a lot of work and dedication to creating consistent content. It will take trial and error before a brand creates the content that best fits the brand. Communicate within the brand and build a team that will ensure success.

The Power of Converged Media

Brands need to properly strategize how to engage its customers into becoming brand advocates. In doing so a successful brand would normally, “utilize two or more channels of paid, earned, and owned media.”

It’s all about strategy and where a brand target its customers. There are many different devices today that customers use therefore it’s important to engage with customers through more than one channel. Traditional advertising just doesn’t cut it anymore, brands need to do more for its brand.

Smart action to take as a brand: Build converged media into a brand’s content strategy. Why? There are 4 reasons why it’s necessary.

#1 Consumers need to view a brand’s message 3-5 times before they believe a message. Customers need to see, hear, or interact with a brand’s message.

#2 Paid media will reach millions of customers with a brand’s content. When paid media converges with earned media (customer’s stories/reviews) then customer engagement will sky rocket. Customer’s will start trusting a brand.

#3 A simple Facebook status post will not engage many customers (only 8- 10% of community). If a brand promotes its organic posts then there will be higher engagement.

#4 Displaying that other customers love a brand (earned media and owned media) will convince other customers that the brand is good. It will create brand advocacy. For example: When a customer tweets how great a brand is, other people will trust a customer’s review and try the brand out themself. The customer’s Twitter is owned media and their opinion is earned media.

Using paid, earned, and owned media will create higher traffic to a brand’s name and product. Now what exactly is paid, earned, and owned media? I got you covered.

PAID MEDIA: Traditional advertising (TV, print, radio, mail, retail/channel)

Audience: General customers

OWNED MEDIA: Brand’s website (Facebook fan page, Blog, Brand community, Twitter, Instagram)

Audience: Customers

EARNED MEDIA: Word of mouth (Facebook, blog and Twitter comments/Review sites)

Audience: Super fans, loyal customers

Content is king, but how you execute content is crucial. Make a brand well-known by using converged media. It will gain more followers and more credibility to a brand’s name. Use it well and a brand will gain a larger audience.

For more information on converged media check out this good read  Your Brand: The Next Media Company by Michael Brito

Every Business Needs Brand Advocates

Advocate: a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular case or policy.

Companies need brand advocates.

Advocates can help tell a brand’s story. Advocates (whether they are employees or customers) can rave about a company’s product. They can do more than just refer other people to a brand. They have the ability to create valuable content, such as positive testimonials and reviews that’ll help boost ratings/rankings.

Companies have PR people that create press releases and media announcements about its new products. However, customers won’t take notice. A brand’s job is to sell its product therefore it isn’t trusted or credible from a customers point-of-view. Plot twist.

What if a happy employee who showed leadership had the ability to influence others (specifically customers). Employees can add value to the company’s brand just as long as they stray away from spamming customers. If an employee is transparent they have the power to hype up a product. It’s quite simple. They can create how-to videos that add customer value or offer customer support when customers are searching for more information. This method is brand advocacy. This action can fuel your brand’s image. Employees can help tell the brand’s story.

Customers love relevance and equality. If customers can relate to employees who are advocates then they are viewed as trusted and credible. This method is becoming more popular among companies. If customers listen to employee’s who are advocates then customers become a brand’s advocate.

Customer’s influence family and friend’s when talking about a certain brand. Organic conversations between customers are powerful tools to increase the brand’s popularity and credibility. “There are a total of 500 billion word-of-mouth impressions every year.

6 Steps to Creating an Advocacy Program:

#1 Selection Criteria: Document a process for selecting a brand advocate. You should choose the most influential people to become your advocates because they tend to have communities who are already engaged in their content and opinions.

#2 Longevity or Program: Once a brand has chosen an advocate it’s important to review their contributions towards the company. Companies can switch out advocates every 6 to 12 months, however it’s crucial to never abandon advocates. If an advocate helped the company then those individuals can guide and teach new brand advocates.

#3 Customer/Employee Expectations: When talking to advocates about a company’s expectations it should be clear what advocates will get in return. Brand’s have to make sure advocate’s content is being reviewed and actually published instead of being ignored.

#4 Organizational Support: There should always be internal support within a company. This can vary from product organizations, customer support, and privacy/security, etc.

#5 Contract or NDA: Brand’s should create documented terms and conditions when hiring a brand advocate. The advocate may be receiving confidential information about the brand therefore it’s important to protect the brand.

#6. Social Media Policy: Advocates have to properly be trained so they know how to follow social media policy.

 Brand Advocacy has changed the marketing game forever. 

Build Your Brand. Build Your Team. Create Your Command Center.

Social Businesses need command centers. Why? It’s because this method allows businesses to make informed business and marketing decisions. Lets use a sports team as an example to help businesses understand why it’s crucial to dedicate time to creating a command center.

A sports team needs to develop a team of great players. Then coaches develop strategies in goal of having a successful, winning game season. On top of the team (athletes) there needs to be sub-teams meaning: coaches, event coordinators, marketing directors, and so on. The same applies to a business. Businesses need: PR team, product team, IT, customer supports, and a marketing team. There aren’t specific instructions on building a command center but there are methods that are useful to follow.

Command Center: “Social businesses command center is a dedicated area where a brand’s social media ro customer service team can monitor real-time conversations about the brand and its products as well as engage in conversations with influencers, customers, prospects, and the media” (Learn more in Michael Brito’s Book, Your Brand: The Next Media Company)

As you gear towards creating a command center it’s important to plan and stay focused. Businesses should focus on its stakeholders, keywords/phrases to monitor on social media, technology selection, processes/workflow, and reporting frequency. Business also need to ensure it has the right goals and objectives or else the creation of a command center will be counter productive. Therefore, take the time to create proposals, answer questions, and control the financial situation.

There are eight steps that will allow you to begin developing a command center.

1. LISTEN: Listening allows growth in a business because your brand can capture voices of the community as well as its employers. Listen to your target audience and supporters because they may become your future brand advocates.

2. ACTION: There’s no point of creating a proposal or objectives if a business can’t properly execute it. Businesses can add value to its business by participating in relevant conversations. If a business isn’t prepared to add value then it should take a step back and wait until its ready.

3. COMMUNITY: A business that listens and engages with its community creates trust and it gains trusted memebers. It’s that simple. Build your community, THEN monitor your brand.

4.BRAND ADVOCACY: A company should have a goal of turning its friends, fans, and followers to becoming its brand advocates. Refer to my last blog entry that discusses how to feed a content engine.

5.CONTENT: Content is only “king” when a business knows how to develop the perfect content at the right time. Additionally a business needs to target the right channels and a relevant audience.

6. INNOVATION: As mentioned earlier sports team are much like business teams. A coach gives players feedback after their games. It’s not to criticize the players, it’s to better them. The same goes with a company. A business should receive customer feedback from the community and build innovative ideas off it it.

Feedback allows a business to strategize how to build better products that customers will actually purchase.

7. RESEARCH: Business should always research its demographics and psychographics. Businesses can hire interns to monitor these specific logisitcs. This will allow businesses to have its research collected and organized.

8. CUSTOMER SUPPORT: Today, companies hire teams to monitor when customers mention its brand whether it’s positive or negative. This is done so businesses can solve customer questions/concerns in a timely manner.

Stay on track by discovery (internal audit of business), planning (After interviews for a business team, plan its launch), implementation (The moment a business begins its first day of its command center. Enage. Document. Learn.Invest), reporting (create a reporting schedule:date points with click rates, conversations, etc), and Kaizen (constantly improve with content, engagement, and the way the business executes its content).

How to Be a Successful Media Company

   As a customer I want a company to be relevant and transparent with its brand content. As a public relation professional I want to provide relevant content to customers. Why? A company needs to reach customers in a way that is fresh and innovative.

Every company should consider becoming a media company. It’s a way for a company to generate content across an online audience. There are five steps that a company can adapt into becoming a media company and a company that’ll engage users.

5 Ways to Reach Customers

1. Storytelling: Every company needs to tell stories in an engaging way that customers can relate to.
2. Content: Companies should constantly distribute relevant content at all times.
3. Relevance: Content should be recent and in real-time.
4. Ubiquity: Media companies are everywhere therefore a company’s content should be everywhere. It must dominate search engines and social media platforms.
5. Agility: Media companies move quickly therefore content must move quickly. A company should have a team that’s ready to write and deliver content at any given time.

In order for a company to operate like a media company it’s key to build a centralized editorial-team. The team should be responsible for creating standards and leading the use of social media. The team should have employees who are skilled that can provide well-written content and can effectively deliver a message to customers.

There are guidelines companies should follow when hiring for an editorial team. Companies should hire employees solely for social media purposes. There are three main benefits when hiring employees specially to use social media.

1. Hiring people who specialize in social media will help companies hire better people. Companies can find authentic employees this way that can help deliver a company’s brand story.
2. It breaks down hierarchies in the workplace.
3. It empowers employees to be brand advocates.

    Companies should be aware that becoming a media company is beneficial. Once a company has decided it wants to go in that direction it’s important to plan a program. A program will give reassurance that the employees will brainstorm content that’ll help the brand tell its story. Pick good employees first then develop content strategy.

4 Reasons to Use Twitter: Business Edition

2 Things to Know Before Creating a Twitter:

1. Understand Twitter Terminology

You can’t successfully start a Twitter account without knowing the proper lingo. It’s a lot like going into an interview and not knowing what company you’re interviewing for. You have to know some background about it. The same goes for Twitter. It’s important to be knowledgeable about the terms you’ll come across when using Twitter.

Tweets: The message you post on your Twitter account.

#Hashtag: You don’t always need a hashtag in your tweet. If you decide to use one only use 1-2 per tweet. A hashtag simply connects people to the same topic others may be talking about. For instance: Just got done working out at @24HourFitness #Fitness #FitnessMotivation

@’s (mentions): This is a way to tag a person on Twitter in your tweet. example: @_a_hernandez 

Followers: This is who follows you on your account and these are the people who can view your tweets on their feed/timeline.

Following: This is who you follow on your account and these are the people that will show up on your feed/timeline.

Lists: You can put any user or account on a list so it organizes tweets in one place.

Retweets: This is when you or another user share a tweet on your timeline. You can either press retweet or you can put RT right in front of their message and tweet it.

DM (Direct Message): If someone follows you and you follow them you can send them a private message.

2. Social Media Rules

• No profanity
• No offensive material
• Don’t be repetitive
• Don’t share any personal information
• Be positive, don’t bully or harass anyone
• Don’t promote things people won’t want to see, especially personal projects

(There may be additional rules depending on your employer and personal ethics.)

4 Reasons To Use Twitter: Business Edition

1. Purpose of Twitter: Twitter is a social site businesses can promote and gain attention for its brand. Businesses can interact with its customers and know what customers want/think. It’s also a site to view what competitors are doing so businesses can know how to be better. It’s also a good idea to follow media so they can stay up to date with a business brand, especially when businesses launch new content.

2. How To Set Up A Twitter Account For Businesses: Simply visit http://www.Twitter.com then sign up and create a twitter handle that fits a business. An example for one is 24 Hour Fitness Gym, it’s twitter handle is @24hourfitness.Then it’s important to get familiar with Twitter, there are tutorials to help businesses tour the site. Then it’s best to design the Twitter profile that’ll suit the business. It’s also crucial to follow people so businesses can gain followers. Lastly, interact with users and gain more customer attention.

3. Why You Should Use Twitter For Business: Twitter is a good place to get a brand noticed because there are 271 million active users on Twitter. There are also accounts that are outside of the U.S. It’s a great place to connect with not only U.S citizens but people internationally. It’s also important to be on every popular social site so that a business gets all the customer attention it can possible gain. Businesses can connect Twitter to its mobile devices, ipads, and other electronics and live Tweet. Meaning if there’s a business conference or business event, brands can easily Tweet what’s going on or have conversations with customers.

4. Monitor Your Brand: If businesses are busy, which most are, then it can easily use Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a domain where users can connect their Twitter account and schedule tweets. So if a brand needs to have a whole week scheduled then it can be done in advance. Hootsuite also helps brands see what people are tweeting even when customers don’t directly mention its brand. For instance if someone said how much they loved working out then 24 Hour Fitness can follow them or tweet them about something fitness related. There are also tools to use keep tabs on a brand such as Brand Watch or Google Alerts. Those are just a few of many. Expanding a brand’s network is important so why not branch out and create a Twitter.

Get started today!

 

 

 

Happy 21st Birthday Livs

https://www.wevideo.com/embed/#247256595

Happy 21st Birthday Livs!

5 Reasons Why Childish Gambino is Cool

1. His name is Donald Glover, better known as Childish Gambino. He got his rapper name by using the Wu-Tang name generator.

2. He is a successful writer, producer, comedian, and actor.

3.He can rap AND actually sing.

4. He doesn’t care about the media’s critics, he writes music that makes HIM happy. He doesn’t care that people called him a nerd when growing up. Because now he is successful and different.

5. He graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in dramatic writing.

His newest mixtape can be found on his website: http://iamdonald.com/

The First 4 Steps to Creating Your Brand’s Content Strategy

Be Creative. Be Innovative. Be Original.

Customers don’t want a brand that solely advertises its products via social media. Brands that do that are the equivalent to that annoying person who only talks about him or her. No one wants to be around a person who does that. It’s the same thing for brands. The following is based from Michael Brito’s Your Brand: The Next Media Company. The following four steps will “help prevent disjointed content, bad community behavior, and customer confusion, which plague so many brands today,” says Brito.

1. Identify the content narrative:

What do you want your brand to stand for and what do you want your brand’s story to be? Remember that each social network has a different type of community. Facebook is geared more for older mature people. Twitter has a mix of the younger generation and older mature people. And so on. Therefore all social media content needs to fit accordingly, depending on what site you post on (Facbeook, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress, Pinterest, etc). “Each channel should have its own content narrative, or at least a different style in how you tell the same story,” says Brito.

2. Determine the community manager:

Team effort will create a successful social media presence for a brand. However, there needs to be a manager for it all. It can be a community manager, content marketing manager, or customer support person. There always needs to be a leader to hold responsibility for all of the content. In order to become a manager you must have the right skills.

Skills for a manager:

• Ability to create engaging content
• Ability to analyze data
• Understand the basics of paid media
• Good understanding of content marketing
• Respond to customer complaint’s in a timely manner

Managers have big shoes to fill but with the correct understanding of content marketing it’s possible to create content that will engage customers.

3. Build a moderation and escalation policy:

Want to keep customers loyal to your brand? Then respond quickly when a customer needs support within your brand’s social media channel. Customer support questions are usually answered through Facebook or Twitter. According to Brito’s research, statistics claim 71% of customers who receive customer support from brands normally recommend that brand to their friends. A brand that shows it cares about its customers will prove the brand has the ability to solve problems when an issue arises. Customers will remain happy as long as the brand has a strong customer care team. Remember, customers are always first. Respond to them as soon as you can via social networks.

4. Establish a measurement framework:

Before you launch a social network for your brand it’s crucial to know the three different types of way to view measurement. The three types of measurement are the amount of customers being engaged, measuring performance of each piece of content, and analyzing demographics and psychographics of the brand’s customer community. It’s important to always keep track of your brand’s performance. This will keep you on track and be able to target what your customers like seeing in content.

After you’ve established what needs to be created for your brand it’s important to create an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar will organize your content that will be posted on a specific social media channel. For instance: Mondays would be one theme, Tuesday another theme and so on. It’s a good way to build a content plan because if you don’t it will quickly become disorganized. You want a social media channel that distributes good content. Customers will also be aware of what content to expect on specific days. Customers can even give you brand feedback on what they like and dislike. Every brand it different, so taking different approaches is okay. Do what works for your brand.

Why is Nike the World’s Leading Athletic Brand?

      What do you think of when someone mentions Nike? Perhaps athletes and the slogan Just Do It? Customers remember Nike so well because of its inspiring content narrative. Nike is a brand that revolves around sports, but their strategy is not to have commercials full of its merchandise. Instead Nike captivates its customers attention with its storytelling. I am a Kobe Bryant fan so when Nike releases commercials featuring him in it during NBA season, I’m ecstatic. And it’s all because Nike develops stories that customers can relate to. Nike tells the right story and here are the 5 elements to why it is successful when creating its content narrative.

Five key elements that make up holistic brand strategy 101:

Content Narrative according to Michael Brito in Your Brand: The Next Media Company claims how your brands, “should translate the core tenets…into a story that demonstrates how your business relates to its customers.”

1. Brand Position: How will a customer benefit from a brand? This is about what a company does for its customers. Nike’s brand claims that if you have a body, then you are an athlete. Nike aims to inspire and provide high-quality performance gear for any type of athlete. When I see Bryant in a Nike Ad it motivates me to go out and buy the latest Nike shirt featuring Bryant. Or to buy some new Nike apparel.

2. Brand Promise: What brands deliver to its customers is important because brands need to follow through with its promise. In Nike’s situation it promises sport-inspired lifestyle products that suit any type of athlete. As a customer of Nike, they never fail me when it comes to high-quality sportswear. I own six Nike running shoes, soccer cleats, and a lot of clothing. This is all because they deliver on its promise of great sport products.

3. Brand Personality:  This revolves around what the company is known for. Nike is known for athlete achievement and encouraging athlete’s to perform at the next level. Nike challenges its customers to be the best they can be. In the image in this post, Nike has embedded its brand position and made it relevant to Bryant’s NBA career. Nike took advantage of Bryant’s big NBA comeback and made it connect with Nike. Creative.

4. Brand Story:  This is all about a brand’s history and credibility. Nike is credible because it provides great merchandise. Nike has numerous commercials that many enjoy, that is a big chunk of Nike’s brand history. Nike molds itself to fit the latest trends and content that customers seek. For instance, Nike promotes basketball and football season. Nike is known for its creative commercials. People are entertained by that therefore, Nike continues to branch off that. I know that Nike commercials featuring Bryant make me and other Laker fans very happy.

5. Brand Association: According to Brito this is a brand’s, “logo, colors, taglines, fonts, imagery and so on.” Nike is known for it’s black check mark and slogan Just Do It. It’s logo never changes however its taglines are innovative. Simple refer the to the Bryant photo in this post, the tagline is creative.  Nike works with the most popular pro-athletes. Many people idolize pro-athletes therefore Nike becomes be more appealing to customers. For instance, Bryant fans, will buy Laker merchandise that Nike makes. Nike promotes his name therefore, customers will come back to Nike knowing it supports their favorite athlete.

Creating a brand is complex, it’s never simple. That is why only a few companies are successful. It takes all these elements and more to develop a brand that customers can relate to. Customers want relevance and relatable content.