Conversation is key to men's health
Every November, the Movember Foundation brings the issue of men’s health back into the national conversation with their well-known moustache-growing campaign. They raise awareness of the fact that men die an average of 6 years younger than women for reasons which are largely preventable, often based on a reluctance to seek help and speak out about health concerns. Stiff upper lips and pressure to ‘be a man’ means conversations about men’s health are often side-lined. This is why charities like Prostate Cancer UK and CALM team up with the Movember Foundation each year to raise awareness of the common health issues causing men to die too young. They aim to tackle social stigma that stops men talking openly to each other about their health. Conversation is key to the men’s health debate – so to kick off discussions this month, here are the issues that will be front and centre of Movember:
Prostate Cancer
A staggering 11,000 men die from prostate cancer in the UK every year, but the exact cause is still unknown. Reluctance amongst men to confront health concerns is preventing this issue from becoming common knowledge. Prostate Cancer UK, with high-profile ambassadors within the English Football League and TALKSport, are leading the charge in encouraging men to become well-informed, vigilant and proactive in preventing and tackling the disease. They’re currently raising awareness of prostate cancer among black men – 1 in 4 will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime, compared with 1 in 8 of other ethnicities.
Testicular Cancer
Testicular cancer, although relatively rarer, is the most common cancer in men between the ages of 15 and 35. Some men delay seeking help because they don’t feel any pain, or feel fit and healthy. Others have said they have waited to avoid appearing weak or “making a fuss out of nothing”. For many, pressure to ‘be a man’ and the British ‘stiff upper lip’ culture is preventing them from seeking help for potentially serious medical issues.
Suicide Prevention
Last year, 75% of UK suicides were men aged under 45 – a shocking statistic that shows many younger men are driven to the point where they no longer see value in life. Since 2003, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) has worked on helping men to open up. Slogans such as ‘being silent isn’t being strong’ aim to encourage men to speak out and seek the help they need. CALM is working hard to break down these barriers by providing a helpline for men who are in crisis, and by pushing for changes in policy and practice – so that male suicide can be prevented.
Mental Health
Mental health issues can affect anyone, and 12.5% of men in the UK are suffering from one or more. Many suffer in silence and refuse to seek medical attention for issues that are not considered ‘physical’. In a 2016 survey by Opinion Leader, the majority of men said they would take time off to get medical help for physical symptoms; yet less than 1 in 5 said they would seek medical help for anxiety or while feeling low. A severe mental health problem can have devastating wider consequences, such as homelessness, which mostly impacts men. Men’s mental health issues are all too often side-lined, and not taken as seriously as they should be. Speaking up and seeking help can save lives.
You can sport a moustache or grow a mullet this Movember – but starting a conversation is key. Stay tuned for more insights from 72Point and OnePoll this Men’s Health Awareness Month and email us at hello@72point.com for more information on how we support national awareness campaigns with high-quality media exposure.
PR’s Fake News: Finding Meaningful Metrics
How many people were actually at Donald Trump’s inauguration? Official estimates say a maximum of 900,000 were in attendance, 100,000 fewer than Obama’s second inauguration and close to a million fewer than his first. Certain publications were happy to pitch much lower than that and soon a stream of images flooded social media showing vast swathes of empty spaces earning journalists the reputation of being “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” according to the incoming President.
In fact, so great is the challenge of fake news that President Trump used his first full day in office to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd. But whatever your opinions are of the man his incoming ceremony showed that the time for playing guesstimations is up, and media and PR professionals need to start listening up.
The PR industry has long wrestled with metrics and has at times become consumed by them. Having to prove the value of brand awareness and the actionable response of positive press coverage is no easy task, and in trying we have almost created our industry’s version of ‘fake news’ in statistics that try to convey a meaningful message, but often end up saying very little at all. Without getting all President Trump on the industry, we really need to look at our numbers.
Let’s start with AVEs. I mean, it’s 2017 and we are still constantly asked to supply these godforsaken metrics. These are the sort of figures provided back in the days when PR account executives would sit with a ruler and a bundle of newspapers and measure the size and space of a piece of coverage to generate an “equivalent advertising value” for that space. Today, people use it because the figures returned are often much higher than any PR budget and so they make PR people look good, but it’s fake news.
Even the more sophisticated measurements are struggling to keep up. Take SimilarWeb. They collect multiple amounts of data and apply an evolving algorithm with a scalable estimator to come up with a ‘best guess’ number of how many people view a piece of coverage. It takes into account the popularity of the publication, average click through rates and where the coverage sits on the homepage, but it still returns ludicrously over-beefed numbers that rarely correlate with the number of shares and other actionable responses. In fact, the PR numbers often converge with the top piece of news content from that day, even though anyone with an ounce of rationale would see the disparity.
The problem we are really trying to confront in the PR world is that we’re trying to assign arbitrary numbers (where bigger=better) to disparate campaigns which are all out to achieve disparate objectives. I have been sent countless invites to seminars discussing how best to calculate a measure of success for the PR industry, and on each occasion, I decline on the basis that surely a one-size-fits-all approach is part of the problem.
At 72Point we take each project by its individual merit. If it’s big numbers you are looking for then that’s what we can deliver – we landed on an average of 14 sites per story in December with an average of over half a million eyes per story. If it’s generating a social buzz, then we’re well set up for that too – our stories achieved an average of 5,546 social shares in the same month. And if it’s generating a bit of Google juice with follow-links and keyword optimised content then let us know, because we are one of few companies in the industry that have eschewed fake metrics for real results, because that is what ultimately counts for our clients.
2017 must be the year the professionals take back control
There’s a proverb in Romani culture that goes “a dog with two masters will die from hunger”, implying that you shouldn’t divide your loyalty because each master will assume the other has taken care of you. The philosophy of moral determinism – also notably satirized by Jean Buridan and, erm Amy Farrah Fowler from the Big Bang Theory – is particularly poignant as the PR industry reaches a crucial crossroads in 2017, where it must decide how to properly balance its commercial considerations with a responsibility to media publications and its consumers.
Last year as part of our annual white paper we noted the merger of several digital disciplines coming together under an umbrella leveraged by the creation and distribution of content. Our take on the year ahead was that traditional PR disciplines are no longer confined to the PR industry, with SEO practitioners dabbling in content to satisfy Google’s demands and marketers making the shift in response to consumer disdain for display placements.
What we didn’t initially foresee was how the input of marketing and SEO industries would impact the sort of content being produced. Marketers, for example, are slaves to the brand and very much tied to its messaging. SEO professionals are ultimately looking for tangible search results. But we PR professionals have to satisfy two masters, and as the industry starts to swell we must capitalise on the opportunity to take back control.
As an agency, 72Point is in a unique position in that we’re sat between PR agencies and the media. Our parent group, the UK’s largest independent news agency, is a shout away at any point and are there to lend us their insight into what is working at any given time, which is advice we dispense to all our clients as well as at Creative Therapy Sessions, which we rolled out across the country this year. We don’t embargo, we don’t distribute our news content in press release format, we don’t include brand mentions in the opening paragraph and we stick to the best stories, and that’s why we landed 100 per cent of our projects in back-to-back months in the close of 2016; We make it as easy for the media to lift our content as possible.
Publications will adapt at pace
Despite much change in the mainstream media market the forecasters are all starting to paint the same story; print revenue is in decline, digital revenue is yet to be fully realised. This year the pace of change is set to shift a gear, with editorial teams likely to shrink and commercial departments expand in scale and remit, often with conflicting implications for the PR industry. Soon, many media publications will be viewed more as partners than a separate entity.
Meaningful measurements
The PR industry is suffering from a serious numbers addiction. It uses estimated coverage views that bare little relevance to the social interactions and absurd projections based on simplistic mathematical sums. At some point, we’ll get found out and there will be a shift to more meaningful measurements which will result in targeted distribution on relevant publications and, crucially, better quality, shareable content.
Google will shift its indicators
In the same way brands will demand more human interactions over meaningless numbers, Google is about to shift from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals to incorporate more genuine quality signals. The end may be in sight for link-building practices, which are currently a key indicator of trust, but a rather shallow one. Google’s algorithms in the future are more likely to incorporate the time people spend on the page and the way they interact with content.
From visual to interactive
Publishers want people to stick, brands want people to share, and both parties want content that works across channels. That’s why 2017 will be the year of the interactive. Quizes, graphic puzzles, even the old “spot the ball” type competitions will have their day in the sun again as we fight to keep consumers engaged.
Ode to Twitter
There’s a lot of talk about the impending death of Twitter; “it’s got no money”, “there are too many spam accounts”; “there’s too much content”; there’s this, there’s that….
All of these things are of course true.
Yes, Twitter is running out of money, that’s no secret but I’m not going to get into that now because, well frankly, money…snore!
Yes, there are too many spam accounts on Twitter. Whether it’s eggs that don’t tweet, naked ladies posting pictures of their flesh, accounts that live to follow people only to unfollow them weeks later and or the trolls, Twitter can at times be an unpleasant, ingenuine place to be and it has damaged the user experience. But they are working on this. Their latest announcement of their advanced muting options, which now allow you to mute offensive words, phrases and emoji in your notifications and mentions so although it won’t stop the existence of bad Twitter users, it will make their impact less noticeable.
Yes, there is too much content. Sometimes going on Twitter can be like wading through the medieval streets of London in flip flops. Treading in other people’s crap left right and centre.
But let me tell you something….I personally don’t care. I love Twitter.
I love that it’s everybody’s dumping ground. Isn’t that why we fell in love with it in the first place?! Because we could dump our thoughts there. Don’t get me wrong, there is sharing and there is over sharing but I’ll tell you this that excessive dumping has given me something that I just don’t get from other social networks: a good laugh. In a world that sometimes makes you want to run for the hills, Twitter can be a source of unlimited joy.
Take the shambles that was Euro 2016. English football fans were left devastated, if unsurprised, about England’s early exit and, although they won’t admit it, by Wales’ disappointing defeat in the Semi-finals. But devastation quickly dissipated when a moth landed on Ronaldo’s face and within minutes endless numbers of ‘Ronaldo’s Moth’ Twitter accounts appeared.
Then there’s Brexit. Millions of people awoke one morning to realise half of the population had potentially thrown their country into turmoil. But it was ok because of the abundance of ‘Twitter bants’ we had to get us through it. Buzzfeed had an absolute field day with them offering us 36 of the best to make us ‘laugh despite everything’. Other lists of Brexit based hilarity can be found on the Poke, IBTimes and Yahoo and, well pretty much all over the internet.
Live scenes from the Channel tunnel. pic.twitter.com/l04wXKpjaq
— John Myers (@johnmyersteam) June 24, 2016
Whoever created this, I salute you. pic.twitter.com/zsyMSd0GIL
— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) October 10, 2016
The same goes for the mind blower that was the US election. When logic and reason had gone out the window, Twitter helped us laugh before we cried. It is also true that Twitter was partly responsible for the ludicrous outcome but it was tweets about Donald Trump that made us rational folk realise quite how ridiculous the man, and the result, is. Carefully edited videos, such as the one to the left, cut through the bile to show a beautiful outcome more positive than the reality. Not only that but the good people of the UK took to Twitter to bring the world back down to reality and help the world see what was really important during this confusing time….the changing shape of Toblerones.
Then there’re the GIFs. Yes, ok, so we can now get those on Facebook but we can also write big, long meaningful statuses on Facebook to convey how we feel. Twitter requires you to think about it. How can you convey how you really, feel with brevity? GIFs. How can you quickly engage someone scrolling through at lightening speed? GIFs. How can you make Ruth really happy? GIFs.
I also love Twitter for its sense of conversation. The world is a lonely place and with everyone supposedly becoming antisocial mobile phone/human hybrids, the truth is we’re actually being very social. It’s just not #IRL social. Everyone is having a chat, online.
The best examples of this are when we look at the link between Twitter and television. Twitter, more than any other social media platform, brings people together during the big (and little) TV occasions creating imagined online communities to fill the void of actual human interaction. Bake Off is perhaps the most obvious example of this.
Bake off is (or should I say was, boo hoo) appointment to view television meaning that, by definition, people are choosing to be inside watching TV and not ‘out’ socialising. But, in reality, the world was watching Bake Off together…tweeting along bake by bake. Innuendo by innuendo.
The correlation between hot TV and Twitter is so
You could hear a rolling pin drop around the country on Wednesday night at this moment. #GBBO #ExtraSlice pic.twitter.com/Bs0MV7060c
— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 28, 2016
strong that Twitter is launching their live tv partnership with Apple TV which allows you to watch the live video (say American football) and have a curation of relevant Twitter feed next to it on the screen so that you can engage in conversation whilst you engage with the video.
The other reason I love Twitter is one of its biggest selling points; it’s THE place to go for breaking news. 2016 has been an awful year as far as news is concerned and Twitter has broken most of it to me. Whether it was yet another beloved celebrity who’d passed away or another horrific terror attack or shooting, I find myself going to Twitter rather than news sites for both verification and updates. 1n 2015, a survey conducted by Twitter and the American Press Institute found that 86% of Twitter users say that they use it for news, and the vast majority (74%) do so daily. In fact, the news angle is so prevalent that they have re-categorised themselves in the App Store; they are now listed under news rather than social media. The same cannot be said of Facebook, who are currently battling against their ‘fake news’ problem.
Twitter also has other positives over Facebook. The biggest, for me, being that the app itself and that fact that, well to be blunt, it isn’t Facebook. The Facebook app is enough to make Bruce Banner bust the seams of his clothes and smash up the nearest town. Twitter doesn’t force things on you in the same way. I mean does anybody actually want the Facebook market place to be in prime pressing position on the app? I don’t. I also don’t want to have to go round and round the houses to be able to access the most recent content in my feed. I don’t want to see stuff from last week that I don’t care about at the top of my wall. I didn’t care about it then; I don’t care about it now. Twitter, despite also having algorithms, lets me see what’s happening now. Yes, that might mean that it’s harder for content to stand out or that content might be missed but at least it’s accessible at my fingertips. If Twitter is ‘full of low-quality content’, Facebook is drowning in it.
But I suppose the key pull for me is that it’s based around two very important things: language and creativity. There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to me than getting appreciation for your use and manipulation of language. Conveying your point and personality in just 140 characters. Making someone laugh in 140 characters. Making someone think about something in 140 characters. That’s a skill and the way to make Twitter last is to harness the people who are best at doing that. Creativity, either through language or visual content is harnessed through Twitter. The spam accounts that I mentioned at the start of this, which feels like years ago (…sorry, ironically for a Twitter user, I’m a rambler) they don’t do any of that. And that is what is wrong with Twitter. Twitter isn’t dying. It’s being eaten from the inside by people with a lack of creativity and a poor command of language.
So, what am I really trying to say? Good question. Well, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, I love Twitter. Yes, it’s got its faults but are they problems that are unique to that particular platform?! I personally don’t think so. I think social media would be poorer if the blue bird flew the nest. There is no doubt that it needs to evolve, everything does, but at its very heart is something special and glorious. Whether it’s conversations being had or conversations being sparked from a tweet, conversation is at the heart of Twitter. And really, in the end, isn’t that the main definition of ‘social’.
Is the PR industry maximizing the potential of bloggers?
In the world of Public Relations all of the KPI’s, AVE’s and company mottos can distract from the aim of the game. What it truly comes down to is generating awareness of a service or product. Whilst traditional media coverage is still incredibly relevant and valuable, there is one area that is massively underutilised and potentially misunderstood– blogging!
Blogs are great for PRs. One of their main advantages is that they tend to focus on one singular issue, whether it’s gluten-free meals, menopause or men’s socks. This means that if your story fits in with the blog’s subject matter, then it is relevant to their readers. By securing coverage in blogs you’ll actually be promoting the brand more effectively with people who are genuinely interested.
Also, by focusing on a singular issue, bloggers will usually have a good understanding of the relevant research, products and experts in their field. If you can convince a blogger that your story is credible and relevant to their readers, you tap into an entire audience of people who trust the blogger’s perspective.
What is vitally important in getting bloggers interested is really getting to know their blog. For example, we work with a lot of parenting bloggers and recently did a story charting the life of an average 12-year-old boy. It was not simply enough to send the story out to all the parenting bloggers; we had to select the ones who actually had sons. It’s always good to explain why a story would interest them and with this particular story it helped to ask them to compare our findings to their experience as parents. Sometimes the content itself is not enough. You have to give the blogger a reason to engage.
So, the million dollar question is: What can PRs offer bloggers?
Payment?
The truth is the principle rule of PR is that we do not pay for coverage. That’s advertising. However, some bloggers run their site as their main source of income and expect PRs to pay them for taking their stories. Unfortunately, that is just never going to happen. When a PR can land a good story on the MailOnline with nothing but the quality of the content, why would they pay a blogger £70? Especially when the blog has about 3% of the readership of the MailOnline. It may upset some bloggers to hear it but payment is just simply not on the table.
Content
Content is what PRs can offer to bloggers. PRs have surveys, spokespeople, experts and a whole host of other resources at their fingertips that a typical blogger couldn’t afford or gain access to.
Personally, I am in a unique situation as I’m both a PR and a blogger. Now if I were approached and asked to write something for money I would turn it down. My voice is credible and taking payment ‘bribes’ to run a story would make it less credible. My opinion can’t be bought. Yet, if someone came to me with good content, research I didn’t have access to, graphics and other resources that I actually found interesting and felt my readers would find interesting, I would be more than willing to take it.
This is what PRs can offer to bloggers: content they couldn’t afford and stories their readers will respond to. PRs can also offer bloggers products to review. This saves the blogger time and money and gives them something to talk about. Providing a beauty blogger with free make-up samples does two things.1- it saves the blogger having to spend money on the samples and 2 – it makes for appropriate content that the readers will be interested in.
Events
PRs also have the funds to put on events that bloggers can go to. Bloggers shouldn’t want to be seen as a keyboard warrior, preaching from the confines of their bedroom. They should be out there engaging with people on the topic of their choice and PRs can facilitate that. Events are great. Not only does it keep the old Instagram account looking busy but it is also a meeting of like-minded people working in the same field which is great for getting inspiration as well as keeping an eye on your competition.
Inspiration hub for bloggers
As part of SWNS, we have an online hub (PLUG!) where we upload our stories and resources. This is free for bloggers to go to get relevant content. Whether a blogger needs stats to support something they are writing about, a quote from an expert or if they are simply looking for something fresh to write about, we’ve found an online hub is a great way for bloggers and PRs to work together. We have the content and they have the following. We provide newsworthy content to bloggers for free and they find their readers responding.
My hope for the future is for bloggers and PRs to understand how to work with each other more effectively and make each other stronger.
Understanding how a national newsdesk works
Can you just email it, please? Six words to send a shiver of dread down the spine of any PR when attempting to “sell-in” a story to a national newsdesk. It almost certainly means that cleverly tricked out idea or cheerfully penned piece of copy is heading for the email queue graveyard, unloved and almost certainly unread.
But perhaps the issue lies in the very phrase “sell-in” – and the alarming lack of a working knowledge of how a newsdesk works.
I should know…I ran one for a decade and had exactly the same attitude to the daily avalanche of well-meaning but ultimately futile calls from PR executives.
A newspaper is not a blank canvas of opportunity to be filled with PR “puff”, rather, at least in the opinion of the journalists manning its newsdesk, it is a limited space on which they aim to paint a daily masterpiece.
Everything must be there on merit. Every line, every column inch must be hard earned. The same golden rule applies to their online counterparts. Content must match the digital DNA of its host. Anything that does not will jar with an online editor.
The step from national newspaper journalism into PR is a very small and indeed logical step to take.
But for many it represents a yawning chasm with an ‘us and them’ mentality that frequently sees the two sides who should, perhaps, be working hand in glove instead diametrically opposed and pitched as polar opposites.
How can this gap be bridged? Put simply by working hard to understand the mind-set of the national papers and the staff who populate them.
By their very natures, news editors are a tough and cynical bunch. There is little a grizzled desk veteran will not have heard during his or her career. They’ll have heard every pitch, every nuanced subtlety deployed to chisel some space in the paper. And chances are, a call redolent with cheery bonhomie will be the last thing they need at 10.45am as they battle to build a newslist that will impress an editor.
Similarly, an online news editor will be bombarded by pressure – working at enormous speed while attempting to make sure every paragraph is accurate and every line sings.
That is why every decent PR would benefit from time spent in a newsroom environment. An opportunity to witness the ebb and flow of a day at the editorial coalface. A chance to witness:
- How a newslist evolves, who is likely to give them the time of day and when.
- The pressures brought to bear by editors and their executive teams.
- The immense speed at which stories are published online.
Much of the problem is caused by the very different timelines in play. A PR exec may have spent six weeks working towards building the “perfect” pitch. Gathering the information, writing the copy, ensuring all is approved by the client – only for it to be dismissed in a matter of seconds by a harried news editor working at warp factor 10.
Understanding the news agenda on any given day is utterly crucial as well. No newsdesk journalist will give a PR their attention while a terrorist atrocity is unfolding. Equally, sometimes a well-delivered light and frothy pitch might be the perfect riposte to the grim horror that seems to haunt our newspapers and websites in these troubled and uncertain times.
Timing is all. Freelance journalists are masters of this, understanding the right moment to call in with their offerings. They have this advantage because they have virtually. all worked in a newsroom environment and there really is no substitute for that.
Even the jargon is completely different…as with any industry, journalists and PRs have their own patois of acronyms and buzzwords, but for two professions seemingly so closely aligned, I have been taken aback by quite how different the methodology and mantras are.
News is gathered organically, and no one can have complete control over how it will grow during any given day.
News editors and journalists, in general, are perpetually one call away from triumph when a story works, or staring into the abyss if a front page splash crashes and burns.
They are expected to keep dozens of plates spinning simultaneously and to move with devastating speed when a story breaks because time is their greatest enemy.
It is only close up that the frenetic pace of a busy newsroom can be truly understood.
It is only through experience that the alchemy of turning newsprint into newspaper can be fully appreciated.
At 72Point working alongside a newsroom is an undoubted advantage. Having the SWNS Group as our parent company means we are in hourly contact with our content users, and actually being able to immerse staff in a newsroom environment with newsroom attitudes gives them an invaluable insight into how the media works.
The art of storytelling
It’s easy to tell a story, watch:
Steve Martin walks into a room. He sits down in front of a vintage typewriter, looks pensively at the clock and begins, slowly to type. As his fingers move from key to key, a single word is stamped onto the page...
You want to know what the word is, don’t you? Is it a happy word? Is it a suicide note? Is that the actual Steve Martin, from Father of the Bride, or just some guy called Steve Martin?
Storytelling gives you the power to change a world – a world of your own creation. If you get the world right, like JK Rowling or JRR Tolkien, you can bring billions of people into it with you, eager to find out what the next word is.
Storytelling doesn’t have to be about creating fantastic universes, either. You could tell a story about the most banal interactions of daily life, and if it resonates with people then it will find an audience.
At 72Point, storytelling is in the essence of everything we do. We’re looking to find stories that will evoke a reaction in as many people as possible, who may then share that story online, in their workplace or at home, starting conversations and debates.
A lot of our work starts with a very small survey – in a meeting or brainstorm, someone will toss out a statement like ‘I realised this morning I’ve been singing Blank Space by Taylor Swift wrong for months’ and that will start a conversation about your hearing going in old age, or the differences between women and men, or how often misheard lyrics replace the real ones in your mind. If it gets us talking, we think it will get the general public talking, and so we’ll then take that idea, create a big survey around it then we’ll have a new story – like the song lyrics that everyone gets wrong.
That story worked because it’s a conversation that millions of people might not think to have, without a little push from us. But once they do, they realise that actually this is a topic that everyone has an opinion on - and if it raises a little awareness of hearing aids, then that’s our work done.
Storytelling isn’t simply about words, either. We’re increasingly using other methods to get across our ideas, from 360-degree videos where online users can explore a new space, to interactive puzzles as well as our in-house-produced video content. We’re covering all the bases when it comes to getting messages and stories into the press.
For crystal-clear visual representation of a story, our talented designers are on hand to create infographics and animations that can bring a static story to life. The best examples of our work are the ones that bring together elements of everything we can do, to deliver a story that everyone can take something from – like this example about debt levels.
Personally, my opinion on telling a story is simple – just keep people reading, one word after the next. If your content is engaging then you’ll do exactly that.
And hey, you made it down this far, didn’t you?
5 Ways to secure backlinks from media publications
Securing ‘follow’ links on media publications is the latest KPI for the PR industry to grapple with.
As if we didn’t already have enough on our plate, right? But don’t despair, link building is a perfectly legitimate process that has been tainted by bad practice, and if you can do it properly, you can justify a whole lot more PR spend.
Media publications have a naturally high domain authority and have therefore become the target of SEO teams looking to piggyback on their search ranking. For Google, news outlets are a dream source of information because, like Wikipedia, they provide fact-checked answers to relevant questions. As the Google bots move from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals, online publications will become even more relevant.
So how can a brand rub shoulders with digital media titles and get some tasty Google juice on the back of it to boost their search engine visibility? Through PR, of course. We’ve drawn up a list of five ways to secure backlinks from media publications to help you adjust to the murky world of SEO KPIs:
1. Citations
Writing brand citations as a domain address can prompt journalists to link it up.
Although a full http:// or even www. can be off-putting, most publications won’t see anything too explicit in a dot com or .co.uk.
Or so Jack Peat of 72point.com believes.
2. Link Targets
To encourage publishers to link out, you need to give them a tangible link target. Rather than simply linking to a brand’s website, we advise that you link to a page on the brand’s website that offers further information or other incentives to link away. This could be a landing page with further information on the story, a white paper with full research results, a graphic, a campaign microsite, a quiz or interactive.
3. Number of Links
We recommend including no more than one link to a brand’s website per piece. If you fill the press release with links it automatically looks spammy and will ultimately lessen the chance of the content being used at all.
4. High-Quality Content
High-quality consumer journalism is of paramount importance. For digital titles, the use of multimedia is equally important and will increase the chances of backlinks been included. Take visual puzzles, for example. Our ‘Where’s Wayney’ puzzle got Ladbrokes a follow link from The Sun amongst others. Infographics are another great example. Our infographic for Intrepid Travel made the MailOnline complete with a follow link.
5. Educate
Finally, it’s important to educate clients on link building best practice and also reassure them that landing links is not the be all and end all. As Google moves to endogenous signals a simple citation will deliver significant Google juice, so rest assured, your content is still hard at work on the search engines!
Tim Peake: Master of content
I love Tim Peake. He’s the best thing to happen to space since Buzz Lightyear. In fact, I had originally planned to write this blog about why Tim Peake was the coolest person in the history of people but then I realised that whilst it was obviously true, that title might not wash with everyone.
So after a quick rethink I decided to go down a different route: Tim Peake – Master of content.
Here at 72Point we’re all about content. In our latest white paper, ‘The Content Umbrella’ we look at the way PR and digital disciplines have come together in order to boost the creation of better quality more engaging content. Tim Peake is a shining example of someone that is nailing content and here’s why.
- He knows his audience
Obviously being in space means he has quite a diverse audience; everyone on the planet beneath him in fact. He’s got something they want. Pictures of their planet from the skies above. But sometimes the success of your content goes beyond being desirable to the widest possible audience. In other words, it’s not always about ‘going viral’. For example being a B2B business, everything we do is aimed at a narrower, more targeted audience.
His photographs of individual countries give their citizens their own little bit of Space. Plus there’s the fact he’s British. He is the first British man to complete the Mission. And you know us, whenever we can find a reason to be patriotic and roll out the British pride we like to do so. Tim’s content echoes that patriotism. Whether it’s a caption on his pictures of the UK or the Flag of St George adorning his space pod Tim knows the Brits are watching.
And of course, when it comes to niche audiences, he’s also got the Space nerds. All those who identify, say ‘I’.
2. He’s topical
Being responsible for our social media accounts and our blog schedule I know how beneficial it can be to know what’s happening when, especially when it comes to content creation. Peak, despite being millions of miles away from the hustle and bustle manages to keep himself perfectly in tune with the rest of the world by joining in with major events. Whether it’s watching England during the Rugby World Cup or presenting an award to Adele at the 2016 Brit Awards. Or remember that time he ran the London Marathon from Space? Yep. He ran the London Marathon. In space. On a treadmill. (That guy!). Tim also uses his content to congratulate and celebrate achievements of people back home including:
- a photo for the Queens’s 90th of him holding a sign with #happybirthdayyourmajesty written on it;
- a congratulations to the Scouts on their 100th birthday;
- a call to Eddie Izzard to congratulate him on his marathons
- wishing good luck to those taking part in the Invictus Games;
- even a well done to everyone nominated in the Hospital Radio Awards!
Not much gets past him. His events calendar is, as they say, on point!
- His content is original
As we all know, due to regular commentary in both the industry press and our own blog, there is so much content available to the world now that in order to set yourself apart your content has to be original and engaging.
Ok, so he has a slight advantage that he’s in space and has access to views that we mere mortals can only dream of seeing. Tim’s photos are not only unique, they are stunningly beautiful. People want to look at them, regardless of whether they’re interested or not. Hands up who’s got Instagram envy?
But it’s not just photography. Take his marathon run for example. Have you ever seen anyone run a marathon in space before?! No, you haven’t. Of course, you haven’t. No-one has. Content doesn’t get more original than that.
- He’s entertaining
Now obviously Tim’s on the I.S.S to do a job. He’s not just there to have fun. You wouldn’t know it though. Whether it’s playing virtual reality Space Invaders, zero gravity somersaults or being chased by your colleague who’s jumped out of a box dressed as a gorilla, Tim’s always happy to embrace the lighter side of life to help keep audiences interested.
That’s what people want. Everyone knows he’s got the technical stuff nailed down. You can’t go to space for months on end without knowing your shit. But if you don’t keep them entertained and only talk shop, who’s going to care? Make people laugh and the boring stuff (sorry Tim!) becomes a lot more interesting and accessible.
People from all walks of life have developed an interest in space technology because it’s been made both accessible and entertaining. That’s a lesson that can be transferred to most campaigns. Obviously, it depends on the subject matter but there’s no harm in embracing your inner child every now and then.
5. He engages with his audience
Tim regularly gets involved with his audience directly, whether it’s his live video calls to school kids or GOSH or his space rocks competition. A couple of times a week Tim tweets some lyrics from one of his favourite songs and whoever guesses correctly wins a very special space rocks patch. Competitions or games are a great way of engaging with your audience, particularly on social media but not exclusively. People love the chance to win something, feel clever or have their say so give them the opportunity to do so and you’re on to a winner. At 72Point we’re regularly producing quizzes or puzzles for our clients to satisfy publishers’ calls for engaging content; take our ‘Where’s the Gherkin Lurkin’ puzzle for Deliveroo. This simple Where’s Wally style puzzle was such a simple idea but it featured on the MailOnline, the Independent, The Metro, the Sun and many more sites.
6. He’s multi-platform
Everyone knows that in this day and age if you want your content to be successful it has to span all mediums. To put it another way, it has to be multi-platform. This is something we’re passionate about at 72Point. We’re in a fairly unique position in that we have in-house specialist teams that cover all options, whether it’s surveys and news copy, design and animations, video or even photography. That means that we can offer the full comprehensive content package to really boost your campaign.
Tim doesn’t have this but he still manages to span all platforms. He blogs, he takes photos, he creates videos. He’s a one man fully integrated media campaign. And he is reaping the rewards. He’s just been featured on the Queen’s birthday honours list for crying out loud! It doesn’t matter what your platform of choice is, whether you love a newspaper, TV, surfing the interwebs or browsing social media, the chances are you’ve seen something that he’s done.
So with Tim shortly to be back on terra firma we’re sadly going to have to say goodbye to the world’s most beautiful Instagram account. But I think all PRs and marketeers have learnt a valuable lesson. Tim’s promotion of a niche subject to a wider, previously disassociated audience has been phenomenal. Know your audience; make your content engaging and original; don’t limit yourself to one platform or medium or discipline and your content will do nothing but stand out. And if there is a problem, Houston, let us do it for you.
Does 'pure PR' still exist?
After almost 50 years of operating as the Public Relations Consultants Association, the PRCA has launched an industry-wide consultation into whether it should change its name. They will consider whether to drop the ‘C’, which is deemed too inclusive for an organisation that has members from across the entire breadth of the industry, and also ‘PR’, which is considered to be a redundant term in a sector of wide and varied specialities. Go the ‘A’ Team!
The public consultation raises the question over whether “Pure PR” still exists. According to The 'A Team', public relations is the intersection between people and a brand, and is primarily concerned with “reputation” and “gaining trust and understanding” between an organisation and its various publics - whether that's employees, customers, investors, the local community - or all of those stakeholder groups. PR professionals use a variety of techniques to achieve this, and differ from marketers because they secure ‘earned’ media rather than ‘paid’.
But there are very few PR professionals left operating so rigidly. "As the dividing lines between practices have blurred over the years, many within our industry no longer term themselves as offering pure PR,” the PRCA statement read, “the industry has changed in nature”.
They’re not the only ones to notice. As Fifth Ring’s Katherine Fair says, “it is getting difficult to pinpoint exactly how communications, marketing and public relations differ from each other”, which, according to Ogilvy’s Stuart Smith, means there is a rush to be “THE agency” that can “own the insight, the big creative idea, produce the content and optimise the channel: paid, owned, earned media”. The definition of PR as being focused on getting a good press “is close to being redundant”, Alastair Campbell says. PR is now about marrying several disciplines to achieve numerous objectives.
We have coined this ‘The Content Umbrella’. It’s a simple concept. It denotes the merger of previously detached industries, including, but not limited to PR, digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimisation and content marketing, and it is a shift that has been on the cards for some time.As Google demands better quality content, online media consumers get turned off by display and brands look to engage rather than convert an amalgamation of disciplines has occurred leveraged on the basic principles of creating and distributing content.
“Pure PR” is a relic of a time gone by. Today, PR professionals must marry several principles that fall under the content umbrella and in doing so re-shape the industry’s outlook. The re-naming of the PRCA is a symbolic move for the industry as a whole; PR is dead, long live PR.