chapter 8
Catching Media Attention Using Facebook
Public relations professionals have used press releases, close relationships with journalists, and creativity to get “ink” (digital or otherwise) for years. Usually there is the client, the media expert, and the journalist who covers the media expert’s client. With the rise of social media, the opportunities (and challenges) for media professionals have increased. Corporate executives have their own Facebook accounts. Journalists can directly engage with companies and their executives on social media networks such as Facebook.
This chapter gives some insight into how Facebook can be used as a powerful tool for getting the attention of journalists so that they cover your brand, product, or service.
Working with Bloggers and the Media
Public Relations Gurus Share Their Insights
Conducting Audience Research
Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, is a public relations and social media guru. In an August 2011 blog post, she gives the basics on using Facebook to get more media attention. This section and following sections (through the “Good old-fashioned promotion” section) are written by Sarah and review the key factors that she outlines in PR Newswire’s blog to help you understand how to effectively use Facebook to gain media attention.
I’m in the camp that agrees Facebook has a place in public relations strategies. However, the charge to “get it out on Facebook” isn’t a tactic I’d recommend. Before one starts communicating via Facebook, it’s important to think first about who your audience is. Chances are pretty good that a large chunk of them are on Facebook. But why are they there and how do they use Facebook? Do they tend to be eager and rampant networkers or are they more focused on friends and family? Are they active in groups? Are they enthusiastic game players? A little research into who your audience is will help you develop more messages and strategies.
“For our clients, we first determine if Facebook is the appropriate outlet and customize our approach based on our client’s goals,” says Mike Nierengarten, an Internet marketing consultant at Obility Consulting. “For example, our client Animation Mentor, an online animation school, is perfect for Facebook because it has tons of great content (video, events, and pictures), a strong (current) student presence on the site, and our target customers (potential students) use the site regularly.”
But exactly how does one research an audience on Facebook? You can start by simply purchasing an ad on Facebook. As you go through the process, you’ll learn more about your audience in terms of size and demographics. That said, I prefer the gumshoe method, meaning you log in and start looking. Demographics won’t give you the insight into where people gather, what sort of messages they share, or the overall “vibe” of the community on Facebook interested in causes related to your organization’s objectives. Any social media strategist worth his or her salt will tell you the first step in planning a strategy on social networks is to listen and you’ll find the same advice here. Find active groups focused on relevant topics and join them. Spending most of your time listening and observing will give you the most valuable information you need to learn the most about your audience.
Determining Desired Outcomes
Once you have an idea who your audience is and what your goals are, you should consider what your desired outcomes are. Do you want to use Facebook to develop relationships with media people and bloggers? Are you more interested in finding and engaging your enthusiasts within your marketplace and building awareness among them? Do you have calls to action you’ll measure, such as lead generation (for example, filling out a form), building website traffic, or generating conversation and buzz? Deliberate planning with your outcomes in mind is always a good idea.
Working with Bloggers and the Media
Virtual environments lend themselves well to building real relationships with media and bloggers.
Andrea Samacicia, founder and president of Victory Public Relations, a New York PR firm, told me that in her former life, several years ago when she was employed by another PR firm, she communicated with editors all day long, but didn’t really start building real relationships with them until she started using social media. “I’m much closer to the people I interact with now,” she says. “I have much closer relationships with the editors, producers, and journalists I’m linked to on Facebook and Twitter. It makes keeping in touch much simpler. You can “like” something they’ve done on Facebook and they get a little reminder about you.”
In addition to building relationships and establishing another line of communication with key journalists and bloggers, by paying attention to what they share and post, you can learn more about what interests them and what they’ve written lately. You may even find a story opportunity among the interactions (see Figure 8.1).
You can even pitch media via Facebook — with some conditions.
“For the reporters in the Web 2.0 space, I have begun pitching them via Facebook. I have found they often respond quicker to my Facebook messages as opposed to the e-mails I send to their corporate accounts,” says Andrew Miller, vice president, external communications at Integral Systems, in a discussion on LinkedIn. “Please note that I have relationships with these reporters and have linked to them on Facebook. For PR people interested in using Facebook as a means to pitch reporters, I suggest doing the same.”
8.1 Subscribing to local journalists and bloggers gives you the opportunity to follow what they are posting and interact with them.
Finding and connecting with enthusiasts and influencers
There’s something for everyone on the web, and on Facebook, or so it seems. For most organizations, Facebook represents a great opportunity to find and connect with “your people.” Developing a presence people will want to connect and interact with requires the ability to produce, curate, and share interesting information and the willingness (and resources) to interact with your audiences one on one. Yes, you want to encourage people to like your Page. But building interactions with your content — getting people to like, share, and comment on the things your organization posts — is where the Facebook magic happens. Those liking and sharing interactions can trigger viral distribution of your message. People won’t like or share boring things, however, so sharing good stuff is an imperative.
Good old-fashioned promotion
Facebook is a great place to generate publicity — that’s obvious. Once you’ve done your research, identified what your audience likes, developed the content plan, attracted and kept your audience’s attention, and have been rewarded with a growing following, then you can actually start to promote your company. Please note — promoting the company comes after you do all the heavy lifting described above. Building context — and communicating within that context — is important on social channels. It would be jarring — and uninviting — if a friendly, funny brand presence suddenly switched to the hard-sell.
That said, I do believe that people understand that brands need to promote themselves, and their products and services. And, let’s face it — if you’re in the market for a particular item, you’re probably going to be interested in information related to that item. So it’s perfectly okay to promote your business, brand, and products on Facebook. However, if you want to do so effectively, most of your communications should be focused on building relationships and credibility with your audience. If 80 percent of your communications are consistently focused on educating and entertaining your audience, they’ll tolerate 20 percent promotional content — as long as you maintain the context you’ve already built. So go ahead and promote your blog posts, white papers, and other promotional content, invite your audience to special events, and offer them special deals and discounts for being loyal fans.
Simply put, Facebook can be a terrific medium for public relations, as long as communicators respect the personal nature of interactions and care is taken to connect the right audience with a carefully thought-out media strategy.
Public Relations Gurus Share Their Insights
There is no better way to learn about what works and what doesn’t work than to go right to the experts and ask them to share their experiences. I reached out to a couple of highly regarded public relations experts and asked them to share their thoughts on using Facebook to gain media attention. The following sections are written by them and tell some stories of successes and failures. As you will see, challenges always arise, but if you handle them correctly, you can overcome them to achieve great success.
Cheryl Snapp Conner, managing partner, Snapp Conner PR
At an awards ceremony, I found myself seated next to three of my most geeky and connected tech friends, who were in the midst of a spirited debate.
“I use LinkedIn for professional contacts.”
“Twitter is for my hobbies and personal interests.”
“Facebook is where I post and find the things related to friends.”
Each had their strategies for sorting the various social networking mediums for maximum advantage. So whose strategy was best? In my opinion, they all were. Regardless of the conscious strategy for which medium to use for what focus, it’s inevitable that PR can play a unique role in them all.
But if Facebook is considered by many or most to be first and foremost a medium for connecting and conversing with friends, where does the PR function come into play? Everybody can name at least a few individuals or companies who have used the Facebook platform to sell and promote in a way that grated, offended, and very literally lost them friends. What, then, are smart companies doing to leverage the PR opportunities of Facebook? It’s a new playing field with very few rules. In the following sections, I share a few savvy examples.
PR for building a dialogue
Consider the case of CityDeals, a daily deal site comprised of several thousand merchants and tens of thousands of active customer participants. CityDeals had maintained a Facebook Page (multiple Pages, actually, to support its various regions) as a means of communicating extra deals and bargains to subscribing participants. It was an excellent means of putting new ideas in the News Feeds of willing listeners, and for many of them, far less intrusive than daily or weekly e-mails.
But the Facebook Page took on supremely important meaning in 2010 when the company hit a rough patch. In the midst of the bad economy, the company entered into a merger agreement with another firm, hoping to bring an economy of scale that would help both companies be better poised to succeed. But finding and closing the right deal left the company undercapitalized for a period of several months, resulting in past-due payments to a number of merchants.
Then — in a nightmare scenario — the planned merger failed. Merchants and consumers erupted in outrage as merchants who were owed money stopped honoring deals. Consumers holding purchased certificates feared a default. The press was rabid, even implying criminal liability. Competing deal sites leapt on the situation and played attack ads, mocking the company’s strife. After a two-week period, however, a terrific solution emerged — one of the company’s merchants, family entertainment conglomerate Seven Peaks, recognized that CityDeals had too much value to fail and acquired the assets of the flailing company. The company was solid. The remaining team was passionate about making the participants whole and starting anew to make the newly founded company and brand stronger than ever before.
But a big problem loomed — hundreds of merchants needed to be settled with individually to determine suitable outcomes for the monies they were owed, and to determine if they’d remain with CityDeals going forward. At the same time, consumers were rabid with worry and anger that the certificates they were holding would expire or not be honored and they would be caught without a means of refund. It was a veritable PR nightmare.
In the press, CityDeals and its new owner announced and assured the public and community that it would do its best to move forward and make everyone whole by ensuring all deals were honored.
Facebook became the means of carrying forward a meaningful dialogue over the painful days and weeks in which the staff worked nearly round the clock to reach merchants and negotiate solutions one at a time.
With customer support lines and e-mail able to handle only limited questions (and every customer support call further slowing the transition), Facebook became the forum to post daily, or sometimes even twice daily, lists of the merchants resolved and the new agreements on board.
“What about the Awful Waffle?” one customer wrote in a post. “It’s my favorite and I’m holding three certificates that are about to expire.”
Facebook was the perfect medium to provide a quick answer to all: “They’re on our list for this week. We are close to an agreement. We believe they’ll be on board and accepting coupons again by next week.”
“The Cookie Palace doesn’t appear to be renewing. How can I get a refund?”
“The Sandy location is accepting coupons. You can redeem your coupons at that site, or you can e-mail your expired certificates to us for a credit or refund.”
Accusatory comments were met with patience, candor, and even humor. Facebook became the medium that helped to quell the anger, communicate opportunity and reason, and ultimately complete a transition that has made the company stronger than before (and has made its participating constituents far more engaged.). This situation, which at times was actually crisis control, was an ideal scenario for putting Facebook to excellent PR use. Kudos to CityDeal for innovating a superb Facebook strategy for PR on the fly.
An interesting side note and caveat: When tempers were high, CityDeals avoided the temptation to censor or remove user comments. The company attempted to answer all questions, even the really unfair ones, with candor and grace. Only when the transition was nearly complete did the company post a cautionary note that from there forward, comments that were clearly meant to incite argument would be removed.
In contrast, another daily deal site experiencing difficulty attempted to use its Facebook Page to malign CityDeals and others. All comments or posts that didn’t support this company’s position quickly disappeared. The company removed them by monitoring the site closely and reporting to Facebook any remark it didn’t like as “spam.” Instant result: comment gone. The censorship was a mistake that backfired, and the firm suffered irreparable PR harm.
PR for building a following
Not every PR use of Facebook involves crisis control. For example, Mountain Resorts, a branded vacation rental website from Salt Lake City–based VacationRoost, used Facebook to build a following of more than 13,000 prospective visitors and customers within a matter of weeks. How?
By offering swag. The company did a limited amount of Facebook advertising, which gave it some momentum. But far and away, the company gained its highest traction by offering prizes — mostly vacation travel prizes, in keeping with the company’s service and theme — via weekly drawings. Sound bland? Not for this company — the weekly drawing was filmed and broadcast live, every Friday morning, via Facebook, of course. There was no clever performance; no viral production involved — simply the genuine action of drawing and announcing a winner that captured interest and showed all participants that the contest was very real. The broadcast remained online via a YouTube video, so it was present for any viewers in the Facebook News Feed, whether or not they happened to catch it live.
Wilson Electronics of Saint George, Utah, is another company that’s used Facebook (and Twitter) as a powerful strategic weapon (see Figure 8.2).
Wilson ran contests, soliciting creative videos from followers and inviting them to provide links on Facebook and Twitter to show the world their results. The response was phenomenal, building thousands of followers over the course of a few weeks.
8.2 Wilson Electronics successfully used Facebook as a strategic weapon to gain positive PR and increase its marketing reach.
Consider also the way journalists such as eWeek’s Wayne Rash and the New York Times’s David Pogue use Facebook to build the subscribership for their columns and articles. After each Wayne Rash column (on the failure of the AT&T and T-Mobile merger, for example), Wayne posts a link to the column as a status update on Facebook. However, it’s not just a link to his article — in the informal Facebook forum, he’s able to provide a bit of extra commentary, aside from the published article, that gives readers the chance to hear his candid opinions in a way that’s more personal.
David Pogue uses this strategy to highlight product opinions and reviews from his New York Times articles as well as his feature projects such as a recent segment on PBS, where his traditional readers would not have expected him to be.
The extra effort by a writer or columnist pays off in many respects — emerging new publications such as ITBusinessEdge and CTOEdge, for example, choose their columnists based not only on the quality of perspective and writing, but on their ability to bring a following and a readership with them. Facebook is one of these columnists’ primary tools.
Expanding the reach and the scope of a company’s PR program
Fishbowl, a fast-growing inventory management software company in Orem, Utah, has used Facebook as a key mechanism to expand the reach and the scope of its company’s PR.
The company excels in corporate responsibility. Facebook has been an ideal mechanism for communicating the progress of its Courage Above Mountains (CAM) foundation, which provides digital learning and support for single moms and other underserved individuals such as students in the Navajo Nation. Facebook is the means of spreading much of Fishbowl’s communication to the community and partnering to invite them to join CAM’s initiatives.
Many of the viral aspects of Fishbowl’s public relations translate extremely well to the medium of Facebook. For example, the company recently garnered regional and national attention for its buyback from the prior majority investor. To make a strong point about financial prudence and careful use of debt, Fishbowl and its employees had an all-out push to prepay the $1 million bank note that had been a part of its buyback ahead of time, on the date of the first loan payment after a six-month period of interest-only payments on the company’s loan.
At the celebration press conference, the company held a “dance off.” Egged on by the exuberant employees, the CEO was persuaded to join in the dance, and jokingly danced across the room, ending his performance on one knee, in a bodybuilding pose (Fishbowl also places a high priority on fitness). The cameras were rolling and the CEO’s dance made the regional news, even going viral through Facebook posts and reposts. The company’s website viewers went wild with response to the news as well as to the video.
A large firm that was finalizing a purchase of competing software learned about Fishbowl from the video segment. It halted everything and sought out Fishbowl, saying, “We need to find out more about this unique company before we make our software decision. Tell us some more.”
This was a PR outcome far beyond what the company had anticipated, but the viral and personal nature of Facebook helped substantially in bringing about this outcome.
Mistakes to avoid
Not every PR use of Facebook is a good one. Individuals and companies who use their Facebook presence as a chance to constantly and blatantly promote bear the consequences — connected individuals disconnect and feel annoyed and confronted by the unwelcome intrusion into their space and their time.
A jewelry designer went so far as to post advertisements for new pieces on its followers’ Walls (now called Timelines). Affronted, many of those users went beyond simply ignoring the ad — they were irritated enough to disconnect, to hide the company, and in some cases even to report the company to Facebook for proliferating spam. Not a good PR outcome.
Consider the audience and the forum. Friends in a private group who discuss fitness and workouts are somewhat affronted to see repeated posts from one of the group members about press appearances and columns she’s published on parenting skills. If the post is not at all in line with the theme of the group, many members are affronted by the blatant misuse of the “captive audience” there.
Another sensitivity to consider: When you post an announcement or piece of information about a company, many readers or viewers consider it an important piece of PR protocol to also disclose any working relationship there. For example, if a PR firm posts the good news about a client’s achievement, the post should clearly refer to the firm in question as a client, to avoid raising the hackles of readers who consider that information a critical part of the honesty and background of what the poster has said.
With these nuances in mind, it’s possible to use Facebook as a forum for advancing PR in new and unique ways. As with any tool, consider the medium and use it wisely and with integrity for maximum PR results.
Janet Tyler, president, Airfoil Public Relations
Facebook takes a pulse on what’s news, now. There are those who say that technology has done more to isolate than connect us, but these same individuals should consider how social networking channels like Facebook have actually enabled deeper, more mutually satisfying relationships between not only friends and family but also businesses and media. In fact, social platforms lend themselves well to building real relationships with media as long as communicators respect the personal nature of interactions and care is taken to connect the right audience with a carefully crafted message (see Figure 8.3).
8.3 Local and national media are on Facebook, which allows them to connect and build relationships with your product or business.
Airfoil has worked with successful global enterprises, including Microsoft, eBay, and LinkedIn, to leverage social media to engage with media, bloggers, analysts, and customers. Our experience is that clients that approach Facebook as an interactive medium, as opposed to a static billboard, derive the greatest return on investment for their efforts. Even a global brand with thousands of “friends” won’t generate quality audience engagement if its Facebook presence isn’t nurtured, almost like a living, breathing entity.
Businesses of all sizes (even large ones with existing media relationships and traction) are challenged to fill the gaps caused by the receding of traditional media due to the proliferation of online content. On Facebook, a small business with limited PR resources can open an account for free and gain access to the same site features and networking potential as larger companies have. If small-business owners listen carefully to what their Facebook peers and media connections are saying, they can also optimize their time spent targeting reporters with story ideas. In this way, Facebook has leveled the public relations playing field for small and large businesses, while creating a new elastic media environment (see Figure 8.4).
8.4 Following your peers and media sources can open you and your business to the trends being talked about and give you some of the same PR opportunities that large companies have.
Consider how the typical relationship between a member of the media and a business or public relations professional plays out:
1. A business develops a press release or a pitch and cycles through necessary internal reviews, edits, and approvals. With every moment that passes, the story’s relevance diminishes.
2. This same business (ideally) researches media contacts, using contacts’ reporting focus or prior coverage as criteria for targeting. More time passes, with the media landscape — reporter assignments and editorial hierarchy — evolving at the same time.
3. Someone on the business side hits send and media receive said “news.” Target reporters may have written a similar story appearing in yesterday’s business section, or breaking news may cast an alternate light on the business story. If none of these variables changed, the news may get picked up, but lack of access to real-time information from media can also make one’s news yesterday’s story, in a heartbeat.
The primary flaw in traditional media relations — and always one of the public relations industry’s greatest challenges — is that, while the process is linear, news by definition rarely is. And it’s this gap between what businesses want to say and the timely news criteria media require that makes Facebook a smart, effective media relations tool in today’s blink-and-you-miss-it world.
Social media channels like Facebook have enjoyed enormous popularity because of their ability to customize, intensify, and accelerate communications. Facebook connections between business owner and editor or reporter (which, in a perfect world, are reciprocated) can generate more meaningful business communication results than blind copying a database full of “targeted” media contacts and blast e-mailing an announcement.
Making friends with media
To take full advantage of Facebook’s media relations value, all businesses must recognize that there is a very specific protocol to initiating contact with media through this medium. In typical media relations, businesses and their communicators most often make initial contact through phone or e-mail without prior introduction to that contact. Certainly there are instances where media connections are made at networking events or via a mutual acquaintance, but in most cases, media accept and expect that at any given moment during the work day a relative stranger will simultaneously introduce himself and ask the reporter to cover his company’s story.
On Facebook there is a higher standard for familiarity. Whereas media aren’t gatekeepers of their e-mail and voicemail accounts, on Facebook they do hold the key — by way of accepting (or ignoring) a friend request — to developing a one-to-one relationship. Just as individuals do not typically friend strangers on Facebook, business communicators should not attempt to friend media with whom they do not have some existing relationship. This is a critical difference in offline and social media relations, and this barrier to entry can actually heighten the quality of media interactions by ensuring that businesses focus their outreach and media receive information from trusted, valued sources.
An exception to this rule is Facebook’s Subscribe button, where businesses or individuals can follow people they find interesting but with whom they are not formally acquainted. Facebook Subscribe doesn’t allow two-way communication, but it does enable subscribers to receive updates from their favorite reporters or bloggers right in their News Feeds (see Figure 8.5).
However, remembering the rules of media engagement on Facebook, business marketers should not attempt to contact a subscribed member of the media directly should they want to follow up on something posted in a News Feed. Rather, marketers should use a different medium (such as a phone call or e-mail) to let these contacts know that they have something of value to add to a Facebook post and initiate first contact in this manner. Should all go well, these marketers may be able to progress to friending media after initial introductions.
8.5 The Subscribe button allows you to follow an individual without friending them.
Marketers must push and pull the story
After the introductions and friending occur, businesses often find that the natural flow of information exchange on Facebook effectively streamlines the rest of the media relations process through this channel. Similar to nonsocial media relations, businesses that both push news (through direct outreach) and pull leads (by tracking a reporter’s status updates) on Facebook increase their odds of securing coverage and, perhaps more importantly, gaining the trust of target media.
Of course, in social media, a push becomes a pull and vice versa, but the premise is the same. Facebook is a powerful tool for giving and receiving information. The channel lends itself well to various outbound and inbound media relations activities, some of which are listed here:
• Push (or outbound) media relations:
• Businesses on Facebook have a built-in news distribution tool, where company updates and information can be disseminated in near real time. If media have liked your Page, they may identify a status update as a bona fide lead. This approach to push media relations is becoming more effective as journalists are increasingly using Facebook to identify story sources, and it also ideally turns into a “pull” tactic with interested reporters.
• One of the most valuable insights gained from connecting with media on Facebook is updated information on what they’re reporting. In some instances, a business may have a strategic counterpoint to make or additional perspective or data to provide. Facebook is an ideal platform for starting a conversation around the other sides of a story and possibly leading to complementary coverage.
• Depending on the level of “friendship” with an outlet, marketers can send pitches via Facebook’s internal e-mail system, which may break through the noise of traditional e-mails. However, marketers must be careful to preserve trust with their media Facebook connections and only do this if it’s confirmed that the contact is open to receiving pitches this way. Some media may use Facebook for only personal interactions and prefer that business communications take place elsewhere.
• Pull (or inbound) media relations:
• Business marketers should keep in mind that social media is dynamic. Its very nature requires the giving and taking of information. In addition to posting company news as status updates, marketers should use Facebook to gain a deeper understanding of reporters’ preferences, personalities, and passions. When a marketer interacts with a reporter in a natural and personal way, that reporter may not be more apt to deem the marketer’s press release newsworthy (it either is or it isn’t), but he or she may be more apt to reach out to the business seeking sources or to test story concepts.
• Status updates can be used by marketers to not only promote news but to highlight the company’s leaders and their respective experience and opinions. Marketers can establish a cadence for posting company leadership “spotlights” in their status updates to essentially market resident subject matter experts to any media in their network and increase likelihood of an inbound request for comment.
Some media relations activities qualify as neither push nor pull, but they can be effective at building relationships nonetheless. For example, liking a reporter’s status update is an unobtrusive way to gain awareness with that media contact. Also, if a business holds a close relationship with a member of the media, Facebook can be an excellent medium for brainstorming story angles with that contact or even peers or acquaintances in public relations.
The key is for small businesses to take full advantage of the dynamic nature of social media, use that fluidity to build personal, strategic relationships with media, and recognize status updates as rich opportunities to identify and nurture story ideas. While making the connections on Facebook does require finesse, once made, “friendships” between businesses and media can assume an even more authentic feel than those formed in the offline world.