There’s been a massive problem with press releases for a long time now. I’ve talked to multiple journalists on many occasions of what’s wrong with the current system of press releases.

It’s also funny from the other side often politicians, or organisation complain about not getting enough airtime, or not getting the story they want picked up.

All be it there’s a whole other side to PR which goes to relationships, power of the individual and organisation but I’m not going to get into that in this article. Press releases are just one tool in the PR kit and should never been viewed as holy.

Press Releases Should Mirror A Story

If you’re trying to come up with a completely new story. You have to sell it. We know that journalists are extremely time poor and PR takes advantage of this by providing free news stories. We know that 45-65% originate from some form of press release. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement which benefits all parties.

Think about press releases as a prepackaged story. Therefore, having a journalist background or being taught journalism is an advantage. You should make the information straight forward, interesting to read, and have all the necessary elements of a story.

One thing recently a journalist pointed out to me was they were annoyed that a politician’s press release didn’t provide any links to information and was simply their point of view on the issue. In a general way in the media if you’re going make statements you need to back it up with further info.

 

Press Releases Don’t Always Have To Be Text Based

There’s plenty of different types of media to use. You can attach photographs, studies, videos, social media, interviews and more. If you provide this in the press release, it’s possible that you might get this media in the story. Budgets a low in newsrooms so by providing content you actually providing new incentive for the story. It also provides more evidence, emotional aspects and can add a human element – all of which journalists want.

Scott Morrision in the federal election took advantage of this a lot. His PR team provided free photographs of him on the campaign trail. You can watch the Media Watch episode which covered this here: https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/images/11109212

Make Your Headline Exciting

So many headlines I see are extremely boring, aren’t creative and aren’t intriguing. The headline should resemble something you would see in an actual news story. It should give a glimpse of the story and push the reader to read on.

 

Make The First Paragraph Compelling and To The Point

The first paragraph should really provide journalist most of the information they need. In the example above it is “we bought the hat” and this is what the money is going to.

Use Dot Points

Like I said before journalists are extremely time poor. Make it easy for them. Provide them a list of dot points near the start with the key facts.

Use Hyperlinks

The problem I’ve seen with many journalists is they a hard time finding information stated so they can check the source. Insert links so they can check the source easily.

Use Blocking

Make sure that the paragraphs are only a couple of lines and they’re easy to read. We know that a lot of the time journalists and normal will often scan documents rather the read the whole thing.

Conclusion

In conclusion think about how journalists will view your story. Does it have substance? Is it actually newsworthy? Have you provided information to backup provided statements? Try to step inside the shoes of a journalists. Or better yet ask one.

This social media manager at 94 with no experience would say yes.

It’s interesting the emphasis on business today on becoming more social. This has led to many to many new roles within business today as “Social Media Managers”. However, it’s hard to pin point how good you have to be to be a SMM.

Some roles I’ve seen have required three years of experience! Some require content creation experience, others requiring
advertising skills (not quite a SMM). They might require you have worked across multiple social networks and have worked with big brand names. Some require advance analytics skills.

I loved when I saw this 94-year-old distort this narrative

Dapne the 94 year old 5 day week took over the social media account for a day (with training). Watch the video below.

This helps to sets out example of what a social media manager is supposed to do.

She had two clear goals

1. Attract volunteers
2. Attract customers

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in the industry and this 94-year-old knew them straight away. Having a clears goals helps to guide content, messaging, and ultimately the outcomes (or ROI).

She knows how to engage her audience

Another massive mistake I see is not engaging the audience you have, or not having content which meets there expectations. She talks to people engaging on the page, she answers questions, she keeps it light hearted.

But hey this is part of broader campaign!

Her appointment to social media manager was because of her age and because it was to mark “The International Day Of Older Persons” and that purposely cheated the social game. But hey that’s part of the social game. You
have to think of things out of the box and this in marketing and communications in general.

A lot of people in companies can do a social media role primarily from their phone. It doesn’t always have to be all bells and whistles. When it comes to social media there should two aims.

1. What are my goals?
2. How can I engage my audience?

Don’t complicate your social media strategy

In business you want all of your staff and customers for that matter to understand your social media strategy so they can engage in it. You should be able to explain a social media strategy in a couple of sentences.

The influence of media on the individual is undeniable. It enhances our ability to make decisions, connects us with the world, and seeks to make our society more transparent. For these reasons is what makes media ecologies so utterly threaded in our political democracy. The media is commonly referred to as the “fourth state” a political watchdog for the people, that checks the actions of public officials (Errington, W & Miragliotta, N2011, pp. 8).

The newspaper could be considered the first source of media in this informing view. However, the greatest change to the political system wasn’t until television became widely available in the 1960s. The political televised debates, news cycles, and political advertising captivated the masses(Comstock, G & Scharrer, E 2005, pp. 71).

However in the new online age of social media, TV no longer appeals broadly, social media is now the growing contender to affect our political system. New media like social might, however, lend itself to decentralized power structures but the old hierarchical model will probably remain for some time (Errington W & Miragliotta N, 2011, pp. 178).

Australian Politics With Social Media

Australian politicians have started to become entrenched in social media as a political tool. Sam Dastyari has spent $20,000 dollars of taxpayers money in one day on four social media videos. Two on the Bill Bus touring around Tasmania in the 2016 federal election, and two were starring of his children, including a piece mocking national tax avoidance.

Adam Bandt has spent $9,000 on three social-videos, one persuading people to volunteer in the lead up to the federal election. Baines (2017) has found there are very little regulations around social media. By-passing the advertising ban, MP’s could use it to stir up an issue on Election Day. One of the most interesting stories in Australian politics on social media was of former NSW premier Mike Baird.

Mike Baird once named “the social media darling” and was famous for using social media to propel himself into the public as a progressive politician. He was famous for using social media for making dad jokes, giving running commentaries on the bachelor, and giving offbeat humour. However, this popularity didn’t last long. With the addition of lock-out laws, and the backflip on the greyhound ban he quickly became the target of thousands of negative comments (Calderwood, K 2016).

From one of the most popular politicians in the country he quickly became despised, inevitably leading him to resign early 2017. The case of Mike Baird certainly highlights some important distinctions. Social media is not a one-way tool, it communicates both ways, we’re able to comment, like, and share content. The original following he may have obtained is now subjected to attacks by anti-Baird groups: hijacking his post, communicating to his following, and continuing to ruin his reputation.

Is Social Media Polarizing The Left And The Right?

Social media has been accused of polarizing politic often containing the left in one series of networks and the right in another. “The left-wing echo chamber” has been the source of many discussions, the main argument being it’s just preaching to the already converted.

A recent report found that following politicians is on the rise. The University of Canberra found that in 2016, 16% followed Australian politicians, and in 2017 20% followed politicians on social media (Murphy K, 2017).

65% said the motivation was to have more fair, and balanced news coverage, removing the lens of the traditional media. It also notes that politicians are becoming more inclined to do announcements from social media rather than news networks, particular examples being Pauline Hanson, and Malcolm Turnbull’s 457-work visa changes.

This issue of social informing has an interesting dichotomy for media scholars, on one hand the media ecologies are growing giving more nodes of information supposedly giving a voter a more informed point of view; however depending on the user’s networks, and following it may be a one-sided view. McNair, Brian, et al(2017, PP.14) writes

Even….with the growth of digital and online platforms which have both increased the number of sources of political information available to citizens, and enhanced opportunities for public participation in mediated political debate, concerns about the functionality of the politics-media relationship remain high on the public agenda.

The grip to the social may be the response to the general dissatisfaction in the news. Only 43.4% said they had complete trust in the news in Australia from The News & Media Research Centre’s Digital News Report 2016 (McNair, Brian, et al 2017, pp.14). This, however, is not something only happening in Australia. Populist politicians are often going to social media such in the cases of Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, and Berney Sanders.

If we consider the ABC’s coverage of the 2013 federal election, we can consider the percentage of the share of voice ALP 40%, Coalition 39.4%, Green 8.1%, Other 4.8%, PUP 3.3%, Independents 2.5%, KAP 2%(ABC 2013). Smaller parties often don’t get as much coverage, leading them to leverage social media to get their political policies across.

The two parties which are going to leverage this tool the most is parties on the edges of the political spectrum, the leftist egalitarians such as the Green’s here in Australia, and the rightwing conservatives such One Nation, and Corey Bernadi’s Conservatives.

Errington & Miragliotta(2011, pp. 110) have described Australia as copying the U.S presidential system because the traditional media only covers the leaders of the two lead political parties because they are the only ones likely to govern.

In this way, social media could be considered good for democracy. Levelling the playing field for a political share of voice. However social media is heavily moving towards the pay-per-play model, the days of sharing content for free are far-gone.

Facebook sharing rate for an organic (or unpaid) is declining(Boland, B 2014) A consideration for smaller parties to get their message across will have to have a strong digital marketing ability, and careful social strategies. Strong messages that engage voters to click a post will effectively increase the reach.

The US Has Shown The Future

The future of the use of social media in the political sphere may seek to use big data. In 2016 we saw Trump win the presidential election race shocking the world. The key to success to was capturing Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin(Liddy, M & Gourlay, C 2016). The question is still debated how did he capture these seats.

Florida was known for being a swing state. However the other states also know as “the rust belt” which seemed highly unlikely for him to win, he won. Iowa and Ohio hadn’t been won by a Republican since 2004, Pennsylvania not since 1998, and Wisconsin since 1984(Liddy, M & Gourlay, C 2016). One of the key things agreed upon by many commentators is this “missing white voters”, blue-collar workers that worked or had been working industrial jobs in the rust belt.

Cambridge Analytica (Issenberg, S & Green, J 2016) describes them as young disenfranchised new republicans, rural with populist spirit, caring more than other Republicans about law & order, immigration, and wages. For a long period of time during the election, it was considered that Trump had little strategy other than saying what he wanted, tweeting it, and spending very little on advertising.

However, this is far from the truth. A rather complex data strategy was constructed. The database that was largely constructed from scratch is now valued at $36-$112 million US dollars (Issenberg, S & Green, J 2016). Shortly after Trump received the Republican nominations Jared Kushner his son in law quietly set to work to create Project Alamo, enlisting the help of digital marketer Brad Parscale, to build a large scale social-media operation.

Parscale’s was the engine of this campaign using data fed from the RNC, Cambridge Analytica, and their own lists they were able to fundraise $40 million in two weeks after the primaries. With Kushner’s connections, they were able to get advice from Silicon Valley in how to scale the operation. This was something sadly Bernie Sanders struggled at only receiving 26% share of voice of online advertising compared to the rest of Clintons on desktop, and a very low 1% share on mobile (Gardner, M 2016).

…Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in a manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost… Specifically social-media (Bertoni 2016).

Without Liberal preferences it may be hard for Labor to hold

Wills is an inner Melbourne seat covering Brunswick, Coburg, Pascoe Vale, Fawkner, Hadfield and Glenroy.

In 2016 the Labor party suffered a swing of –10.32% (2 Party Preferred) against the greens. If the Greens can gain another +9.76%, or another 9,185 votes they could likely gain the seat. To make matters worse for the Labor party the Liberal candidate has recently resigned due to homophobic comments, which means without the Liberal preferences it could be very difficult to hold it at all.

21.93% of the total votes first preference was Liberal. 61.27% of their second preference went to Labor and the other 38.73% went to the Greens. Because Australia’s lower house voting system works on a preferential voting system, voters get to decide where they put their preferences. The AEC requires all voters to number every single box on the ballot paper

The Greens candidate Adam Pulford who is gay which in the irony of the situation could work in his favour. When the same-sex marriage survey was done for Wills, 70% of the electorate said Yes. However, it’s difficult to know if this will translate likely into more votes.

One Labor operative to the Sydney Morning Herald said the seat will be more difficult to hold and that votes were likely to “spray” in directions they could not predict.

The south of the electorate, Greens strongholds below Moreland road have a majority over 50% except one. However in the north of the electorate, the more north you go the more Labor you get, with some booths in Fawkner, Hadfield having over 70% of the vote. The North-South divide will likely be an interesting one with voters in the south caring moring about issues like Refugee rights, Adani and climate change, while North voters may be more likely to care about the cost of living.

It doesn’t necessarily mean it will be an easy seat for the Greens to steal. In the nearby electorate of Cooper (formerly known as Batman), the Labor party managed to fight off the Greens tide wave with their former ACTU Union candidate Ged Kearney in the Batman by-election. The seat previously held a margin of 1% against the Greens and Labor has managed to get a bigger hold of 4.38%.

Although to make things worse for Labor they’ve had swings against them in both the South and the North in the state elections. The Greens took Brunswick with a swing of 2.8%.+Sure?

Pascoe Vale also in the north which covers Glenroy, Pascoe Vale, and Coburg also had a swing of 8.2% to independent front runner Oscar Yildiz who captured 23.5% of the primary vote who pitched to voters that Labor doesn’t do anything for the north. It will be interesting to note if this sentiment is continued on into the federal election.+Sure?

Recently I talked to a Greens volunteer about their chances in Will. He said it looked good however he was scared that the Labor party handing out fake hot to vote cards. Last year a group handed out fake HTV cards in Northcote.+Sure?

Likely if there aren’t any stuff ups the Greens could have this seat in their bag, however, in an election campaign anything could happen. We’ll just have to wait till May 18th.

When it was announced in early January marketers went into a chaotic frenzy trying to understand how it will affect their bottom line. Here is the original post from Zuckerberg:

One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.We built…

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, 11 January 2018

Social Media Examiner was quick to the party as always although just stating how marketers should stack their cards. The obvious advice: invest in groups, invest in targeted paid traffic, and do audience research.

Interestingly everyone seems to have a different take. Mark Schaefer has considered it not too much of a hindrance, or much of a change at all considering the poor organic reach of most businesses these days.

There has been a shift and probably for some time…

…and probably for the good. The newsfeed for some had become unbearable. Often when I’d talk to friends about Facebook the same line would come up,

“…there’s so much crap.”

For a lot of people, they had already left the network (or stop using) because of this. For the younger generations of 15-20’s they simply moved to Instagram and never bothered to make a Facebook account.

Zuckerberg’s only doing it for survival.

I never believe Zuckerberg is as sincere as he likes to talk. If we want to look at a history of the platform, businesses and organisations were once given substantial reach in marketing for organic traffic. As they’ve tried to monetise the platform over time they’ve started to slowly remove the organic reach.

Well, they started to get a lot of crap, suggested content, ads, and sometimes content not even remotely related to them.

What was the result for the consumer?

The results of the latest changes…

Not-for-profits have been given an increased boost. The Last Straw an organisation I used to volunteer for I have seen their traffic go up dramatically. One recent post had a 100,000+ reach for just a photo piece while only having a 3,000 following.

Not-for-profits have been given an increased boost. The Last Straw an organisation I used to volunteer for I have seen their traffic go up dramatically. One recent post had a 100,000+ reach for just a photo piece while only having a 3,000 following.

Actions speak louder than words. This International Straw Free Day, join people across the world and help raise…

Posted by The Last Straw Australia on Saturday, 27 January 2018

In comparison I was recently was asked to look at a startups Facebook page and having the same following they would struggle to even reach a 1% engagement of their followers.

Groups have also been given a big boost. Ideally if there’s a way to integrate them into your marketing strategy do so. I know this has been a much needed boost for people who have already invested heavily in do a community run approach to their marketing.

What else can I do…

If you haven’t started investing in paid traffic the time really is now. Highly targeted marketing at the right individual can effectively grow your page, drive traffic to your website, and achieve your marketing goals with social media quicker.

The fact is Facebook rewards good content, with good targeting. If your post achieves “relevance” to your audience, and deliver engagement you should be given extra traffic to reach your goals.

When your creating content as well you need to think why this is relevant. Are you using owned or someone else’s media? Owned media in the long run will always out perform someone else’s media but can be more time consuming and expensive.

If you don’t like these options, why not invest in another platform? Instagram is great for organic traffic. You also still have Youtube, Pinterest, and even Twitter for some audiences.