Two years after its creation, the search engine launches its second and improved version. This platform, in France, Spain, UK, Italy and Germany, is faster, offers more functionality, and now includes the measurement of reputation in the media.
With response time greatly reduced, Pickanews 2 analyses more than 40,000 media sources (about 10,000 print titles, 30,000 blogs and news websites and nearly 250 television channels and radio stations), as well as social networks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Major innovation: the platform is now used as a tool for measurement of reputation and results are presented by media type.

Reputation Management
Pickanews 2 is the key solution for effective reputation management across media. With many trackers and charts representing trends and localisation of clippings, information is displayed better, making it easier to put into perspective. The search engine is an essential tool to ensure the image and reputation of the company, its product or brand, allowing them to better position itself in its market.

For PR and marketing professionals
In addition to appealing to the communication managers, PR managers and information officers, Pickanews now targets marketers. The Pickanews dashboard provides essential functionality to the promotion of its PR actions, but also to carry out marketing benchmarks and comparative media analysis.

While the world’s top PR firms more than tripled their revenue from 1994 to 2000 , the emergence of social media caused a seismic shift in their profession. Brian Solis coined the term PR 2.0 to describe the new approach required of the industry: PR is no longer spin or publicity, and PR doesn’t stand for “press release” but for “Public Relations”. (read full post here)

Deidre Breakenridge, who co-authored “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” with Solis, has defined Eight New Practices for the PR Professional:

1. The Policymaker
2. Internal Collaboration Generator
3. Crisis Prevention Doctor
4. Communications Technology Tester
5. Reputation Task Force Member
6. Organizer of the Communications Process
7. Relationship Analyzer
8. Master of the Metrics

All of these new roles are embodied by a new kind of communications executive: the PR 2.0 Professional.

Twitter is fast becoming the defining communication channel of our age. While TV, radio and the press used to announce major news events, the world’s favourite microblogging platform is now the place where stories break, and are rounded out in full. Where were you heard that Osama bin Laden was dead? Probably glued to Twitter.

By now you have at least one Twitter account, and you’re regularly reading and responding to tweets… but are you getting the most out of Twitter as a PR tool?

According to research by the Council of Public Relations Firms, cited by the Public Relations Society of America, most PR professionals (79%) believe that social media will be included more in future campaigns, but over half (59%) say it isn’t currently utilised enough. In the PRSA’s own survey of nearly 500 practitioners, they named Twitter as the second most important social media for their overall PR effort, just behind networks like Facebook.[1]

If you’re still getting to grips with Twitter, you might want to check out Al Clarke’s 10 Business Reasons for using the platform[2] and Barré and Schroeter’s Twitter Business Guide.[3] If you’re already up and tweeting, here’s how to make it work for you as a PR tool:

1. Micro-target specific communities

The ability to target specific communities makes Twitter especially useful to PR professionals. Use the platform’s in-built search or handy tools like Follower Wonk[4] to find people who are interested in the subject of your campaign and target your communications at them.

2. Build relationships

Just as you would avoid cold calling in real life, it’s better to build relationships on Twitter before launching into pitches. Follow someone’s tweets to find out about them and their interests, and retweet or respond to them to start up a relationship before campaign launch.

3. Think about when you tweet

Generally, the best times to post are in the morning before work and just after lunch. But different audiences are active at different times, with B2B tweets receiving a far better response on weekdays than on weekends.[5] Find out when your target community is on Twitter, and talk to them then.

4.  Look out for journalist requests

Twitter offers a unique benefit: the ability for media and PR professionals to interact directly over the platform. Many journalists actively call for input into stories using the hashtag #journorequest – follow this conversation and look for opportunities to get involved.

5. Use Twitter as part of an integrated comms strategy

Twitter can be used in any campaign that requires an authentic, personal and highly targeted connection with an audience, but it should only form a tactical part of a broader strategy. Make sure that Twitter supports your client’s communication goals and works alongside the rest of the campaign.

So now you’ve mastered Twitter –what’s next?

Tim Wheatcroft, general manager at Allison & Partners, told another PRSA survey that he believes “Twitter’s popularity in the mainstream will tail off a little as time passes and hype wanes; however, it will continue to be a useful PR and communications tool.”[6] No doubt other digital/social tools will emerge that also work for PR professionals, but it would be foolish to play the “Next Big Thing” guessing game when there are existing services that could be adapted to meet these needs.

While Wikipedia is slowly opening up to paid editors like PR professionals[7], Quora already offers an alternative platform for knowledge sharing, one that eliminates the “signal to noise” problem identified by the PRSA’s Twitter users. The Q&A site houses mini-communities where expertise and informed opinion is shared, making it a good place to research and seed ideas. Google+ also allows for micro-targeting with its Circles function, which could prove useful to large PR firms wishing to segment customer/contact sets by categories like interests or country.

Storify enables users to curate content from sources like Twitter, Tumblr and Vimeo, as well as mainstream web, in order to create a rich timeline of events. Social audio platform SoundCloud used it to record their highlights of 2011,[8] but Storify could prove just as useful for crisis communications or launches, as it allows for a sustained narrative that can be easily updated.

But for now, Twitter is an indispensible tool for direct communication with consumers and journalists alike. Hopefully the above pointers will help you to use the platform most effectively for PR campaigns. Do you have any other top tips for using Twitter as a PR tool? Drop us a comment below.

[2] http://79.170.44.76/amecks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Twitter-10-Business-Reasons-Al-Clarke-Ltd-White-Paper-October-2011.pdf

[3] http://www.scribd.com/doc/67972411/Twitter-Business-Guide

[4] http://followerwonk.com/

[5] http://argylesocial.com/infographics/social-timing-insights-infographic

[6] http://www.prsa.org/intelligence/prjournal/documents/2011winterevans.pdf

[7] http://socialfresh.com/jimmy-wales-and-public-relations-face-off/

[8] http://storify.com/SoundCloud/sc-flashbacks-january-2011

We are living through paradoxical times: while whole sectors of the economy are experiencing the worst recession since the 1930s, the world of communication continues to show many promising avenues for development. We have identified just some of the trends facing the PR industry in 2012: landmarks on a map where the lines are constantly moving.

1. The indispensable presence on social networks

One of Press Index’s most significant discoveries is that social media is not yet fully integrated into the digital strategies of PR agencies. Our study last year of the UK’s leading PR consultancies showed that half of the top ten didn’t have profiles on both Facebook and Twitter,[1] and so were missing out on an essential means of communication and influence, as well as access to niche communities and the general public, plus journalists, bloggers and business targets.

The Worldcom Consumer Practice Group emphasises the importance of social networks to PR. “As social media continues to evolve in 2012, communication pros have the best opportunity and the most relevant skill set to guide organizations to build meaningful consumer engagement versus being purely content pushers,” writes co-chair Dawn Doty.[2] “As the new year begins, we encourage all communication pros to continue to muscle into the discussions that matter within their organizations to maximize the channels that now allow this authentic consumer engagement.”

2. Reputation and crisis management

The TIME magazine Person of the Year for 2011 was “The Protestor”, and those that used social networks to help overthrow the dictators of North Africa can no longer be ignored. Just as governments must now pay attention to the people in the street, so must corporations monitor their e-reputations and prepare for crisis management. According to Daniel Tisch, President of reputation specialists Argyle Communications, the consequences will be severe for those who refuse to listen to their public, to anticipate and, when the time comes, to react.

3. Adapt and innovate in the digital age

It is clear that the digital age has not finished disrupting habits. The CEO of Text 100, Aedhmar Hynes, believes it is important that the communicators are able to convince business leaders of the importance of digital communication – when this doesn’t happen, brands get left behind. By the end of 2011, the new standard for digital was SoLoMo: Social, Local and Mobile. The increasing importance of mobile and social networks mean that agencies must evolve their communications beyond the traditional press release and increase the channels through which they are delivered.

A statement must be easily accessible online, read on a Smartphone, tweeted and ideally enhanced with links, videos and graphics. The announcement of oneforty’s acquisition of HubSpot caught the attention of Shift Communications, creators of the original Social Media Press Release – each sentence was a standalone tweet, complete with a hashtags and a link to the full story.[3] Adaptation is no longer sufficient. Social media communications must innovate.

4. More and more content… even more influences

The maxim that a good PR professional is first and foremost a good journalist is truer now than ever, since the Internet has ushered in the practice of brand journalism. The objective is clear: create links by sharing expertise, improve SEO, and as a result be at the crossroads of new communications. “Done well, a smart content strategy will buy your brand a seat at the audience table,” says Sarah Skerik from PR Newswire.

Today, knowledge of the brand is as important as the knowledge of the target audience. Successful branded content must incorporate the upstream (monitoring trends, awareness of business, innovation and cultural developments) as well as the downstream (knowledge of public expectations, targeting campaigns etc). For this reason, PR cannot work independently of marketing, with some suggesting that a 360° approach should include the sales force in this virtuous circle of global communication.

With all these shifts in the methods and means of communication, the key to credibility is adopting and adapting to new ideas. This is the real challenge ahead in 2012 – are you up to it?[4]

[2] http://www.worldcomprgroupemea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Social-Media-Trends-2012.pdf

[3] http://www.pr-squared.com/index.php/2011/08/the-social-media-press-release-continues-to-evolve

[4] With our best wishes for 2012 http://blog.pressindex.com/2012/01/media-monitoring-key-figures-for-2011/

January means balance sheets, forecasts and other statistics. For Press Index, looking back at 2011 shows a year of strong growth for international monitoring.

One of the key drivers of this growth is the expansion of monitoring parameters. The first step in business intelligence is the gathering of information in the financial, competitor and technological fields. This will include consumer and also specialist trade media, online as well as print and broadcast.

But this monitoring is not limited to “traditional” mainstream media – it now encompasses new media, which greatly expands the search field. Social media requires us to consider information not just from a national perspective, but also on an international and multilingual scale. Communities and target audiences are no longer limited to individual countries as the user bases of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube cross over national borders.

And what is happening in social media is influencing the mainstream media: it’s not just consumers who see beyond the borders. Journalists themselves are increasingly using Twitter to expand their own field of vision and analysis, and we’re seeing more journalism projects tied into social, with little regard for country.

Therefore knowledge and communication transcends borders. The new digital buzzword SoLoMo combines three current trends: social, local and mobile. But shouldn’t we replace the “Local” with “Global”, precisely because the borders between regions are dissolving?

Given the new challenges of companies’ internationalisation and the phenomenon of the globalisation of marketing and communication services, PR agencies continue to focus on and organise worldwide networks. A single agency can now easily adapt campaigns conducted by worldwide partner agencies for the UK market while offering international campaigns to its customers, a trend that is reflected by the progress of international media monitoring. The needs are numerous and changing: being able to view the latest news about a brand in Europe and beyond; to identify the impact of media communications campaigns conducted outside of the country of origin; to evaluate their media impact internationally…

And with the development of networks such as PRGN (based in the US) and IPRN (United Kingdom), and the truly international dimension of their members, this trend will only strengthen as 2012 unfolds.