3 ways PR pros can reach Australian women in the social space
Aim your marketing satellites towards Venus, but make sure you do it right.
The world of technology has traditionally been perceived as a male-dominated arena, one in which pale-skinned geeks lusted over the latest gadgets and gizmos in poorly lit basements, leaving women sidelined and outsiders to the whole affair.
However, as show, this tired trope is no longer true and women are just as tech-savvy – if not more so – than their male counterparts.
Who’s driving the tech market in Australia?
This trend is particularly pronounced here in Australia, where women are very much behind the steering wheel and in control of where the tech market is headed. Some nine million women (more than half the country’s population) were online in June 2015, according to figures collated by Nielsen, but it’s what they’re doing in the digital space that will be of most interest to PR managers.
Around 57 per cent of women are regularly browsing social media profiles, far outweighing male interaction rates of 46 per cent. In addition to connecting with friends, family and their favourite brands, women are also more likely to share content than men (23 per cent and 20 per cent respectively). These impressive statistics not only demonstrate females’ growing confidence in the digital space, but also reveal the need for PR professionals to keep their online campaigns equally targeted between genders, or even slightly skewed towards women.
How effectively are campaigns currently reaching women?
In short, not at all. Despite the obvious importance of the female consumer, She-conomy found that an unbelievable 91 per cent of women feel misunderstood by marketers. This enormous disparity will naturally be of concern for anyone seeking to maximise their brand engagement, but the question remains: How can organisations better connect with Australian women through online platforms?
1. Time your content delivery
As you might have noticed from looking at your personal feeds, social media use fluctuates quite substantially throughout the day. For example, social media analytics might reveal that posting content to Facebook at 3 a.m. yields less exposure than a well-crafted article shared in the evening.
Research from Sensis showed that Australian women are most active on social media platforms after work, before bed and first thing in the morning. Time your posts to coincide with these parts of the day to maximise engagement with your female demographic.
2. Create content that resonates with your demographic
Female-targeted campaigns of yesteryear might have revolved around gaudy splashes of pink and allusions to cooking, cleaning or motherhood, but as you might have guessed these strategies are not going to be very effective in the modern world.
Instead, focus on creating content that people of any gender would want to share with others. As Entrepreneur magazine recommends, this means producing content that is entertaining, interesting, beautiful, of practical value or in line with your target audience’s beliefs. The important thing is that the content is tailored towards your market.
3. Choose your battlegrounds carefully
Nielsen found that while women are the dominant force in the general social space, men are more active on some specific platforms. Males have a higher presence on LinkedIn, while females boast the lion’s share on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. The gender split is roughly even on Twitter.
For maximum engagement with a female demographic, therefore, PR pros would perhaps be wise to focus their energies on social arenas outside of LinkedIn. Monitoring your social media influencers might also provide greater insights into which platforms you should be pursuing.
In both the print and digital space, females have long felt misunderstood by marketers. As women in Australia continue to emerge as a dominant force in the tech realm, PR managers will need to rectify this trend in order to find greater brand engagement on social media.
Creative and strategic marketing professional with experience in planning and delivering end-to-end marketing campaigns across multi-channel platforms. As a Marketing Manager at Isentia, Vittorio loves creating educational content for the media and communications industry.
How do you measure the effectiveness of a Public Relation (PR) campaign? In this post we explain some of the key PR metrics used by leading brands to demonstrate PR ROI.
Measuring the success of Public Relations has typically been a difficult task for Communications professionals.
This is because relying on traditional metrics such as reach and impressions in isolation often doesn’t result in a clear, concise understanding of the performance of a PR activity.
So how do you define success in PR? Here are the three key pillars of any PR measurement program.
Pillar 1: Defining your objectives
As a PR professional, it’s important to have a strategic plan that encompasses what your organisation is trying to achieve and how PR will support those goals.
Strategic planning is a critical first step. This is particularly important when measuring the performance of PR because ROI cannot be measured solely based on traditional metrics alone.
Are you looking to increase your CEO’s profile among potential stakeholders? Your PR objective could be to arrange speaking opportunities at industry events for your CEO to become known among key audiences.
Is your brand targeting new sectors? Your PR objective could be to pave the way for lead generation with a PR campaign. You could then use other marketing tactics to target your prospects.
Is organisational reputation under threat? Your PR objective could be toimprove brand reputation over a set period of time.
Is your organisation launching a new product? Your PR objective could be to focus on awareness and support the marketing organisation in the delivery of a product strategy.
Having a clear and defined strategy can yield a robust and effective PR action plan that will support your business goals.
Pillar 2: Defining PR metrics
In today’s hyperconnected world, the abundance of metrics available to comms and marketing teams can make reporting overwhelming.
On the other hand, choosing your key metrics wisely and getting alignment between these and the set business objectives can lead to measurable PR.
So what are some of the key measures of the effectiveness of a PR campaign?
Mentions
Depending on your objectives, tracking media mentions can be a realistic representation of the performance of your PR campaign.
With the right tools you can track mentions as they relate to brands, topics, spokespeople and more. Let’s take brand mentions as an example.
Brand mentions, though not directly tied to sales, are essential to understanding the impact of your PR campaign. Here are only some of the key metrics that you can use to examine brand mentions:
Brand mentions by media type
Brand mentions over time
Total cumulative volume of brand mentions
Sentiment related to those brand mentions
Brand mentions by spokespeople
As an example, in the below chart we have analysed a data set of brand mentions over the space of two weeks. PR teams can leverage such a metric to track the performance of a PR campaign as it relates to message penetration and volumes over key dates.
Media coverage over time gives you a view of the effectiveness of your PR strategy at key dates
Your chosen metrics should help you determine if your PR campaign is performing according to plans or if there is an opportunity to pivot your channels, message or other aspects of your activity.
Key outlets
Monitoring your target outlets can be a great way to understand whether your PR message is landing in the right hands and how this is like to resonate with your audience. Not surprisingly, most PR campaigns rely heavily on the successful execution of two key elements:
Consistency of the message
Share of Voice across target channels
Here is how outlet analysis can help you visualise message penetration, without employing manual processes.
Media outlet analysis helps you measure PR effectiveness by publication
The same data can give you insights into the potential reach of those channels, adding more context and measurable output to your reporting.
Media outlet analysis can give you an important measure of the potential reach of you PR content
Share of Voice
Employing Share of Voice as part of your PR reporting toolkit can shed some light on the performance of a particular message or topic over another. Whether you are tracking brands, industries, or other topics, Share of Voice can help you identify:
Volume of mentions for one topic over another (and over time)
Volume of mentions of one topic over another as it relates to sentiment
Volume of mentions by media type / channel (Example below)
Other key metrics that can help you contextualise your media coverage
Share of Voice can help you measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign by campaign
Geography
Understanding the geographical extent of your PR effort is vital in order to assess the effectiveness of your campaign. In fact, whatever the objectives of your overall strategy are, most organisations have a very specific geographical reach or target.
Location charts can be utilised to measure the geographical effectiveness of your PR strategy
Location charts can help you identify where your message is landing and the geographical impact of your PR campaign. Your location report should include major metropolitan as well as regional outlets.
Pillar 3: Tracking and Reporting
After you have identified the objectives and key metrics of your PR plan, define your tracking and reporting methodology.
Too often, reporting is seen as a tedious task to be carried out upon campaign conclusion. Tracking and reporting, if done correctly, can be an effective way to identify areas of improvement and opportunities to give your campaign the best chances of success. When defining the methodology of your PR tracking and reporting framework, consider:
Responsibilities: Who will be in charge of tracking and reporting on the various metrics?
System: Define what tools your team is going to use to measure PR and share the results with the various stakeholders. These can be as basic as shared spreadsheets or more comprehensive PR monitoring tools.
Cadence: Define the intervals of your tracking and reporting. When is the team going to look at and report on the various metrics?
Audience: Who will be the audience of your reports? Will this be shared externally (Perhaps with clients) or internally (Executive / leadership teams)?
Adjustment: What will be the process for analysing the results and adjusting your strategy throughout the campaign.
Conclusion
In this article we discovered the three pillars of a PR measurement plan and discussed how measuring PR doesn’t only come down solely to analysing data.
Defining your goals, setting your metrics and having a tracking and reporting system in place are the essential components that any PR and Communication team should take into account.
Isentia is APAC’s leading media intelligence provider, empowering PR and communications teams with the tools they need to make great decisions. For more information or to see our platform in action, schedule a demo today!
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Blog
How to measure PR: The 3 key pillars
How do you measure the effectiveness of a Public Relation (PR) campaign? In this post we explain some of the key PR metrics used by leading brands to demonstrate PR ROI.
With a new year brings new organisational goals and strategies. To help you achieve success in 2020, we have chosen the top 7 events for PR and Communications professionals to attend across Australia and New Zealand.
Learn about: Brand building, behavioural science, cultural trends.
For:
Specialists
Advisors
Managers
Directors
Heads of Communications or PR
Brand Communications
Social Media
Owners and Directors
Media or Community Relations
Corporate or Public Affairs
Employee Communications Publicists
Accounts and Business Development
Managing Director
CEO
A must attend event for public relations, social media and communications professionals. Mumbrella’s CommsCon explores the major issues affecting the PR and communications business and helps industry professionals navigate the ever-changing landscape. The event features the industry’s most senior leaders discussing the biggest topics in PR and communications to better understand meaningful brand building, behavioural science, cultural trends, pitching and more.
Attending the Mumbrella CommsCon event will enable you to distinguish a clear plan for how you’re going to drive business value and gain trust and confidence with your audience.
Emergency Media & Public Affairs (EMPA) Conferences
Event details: 12 - 14 August 2020. Wellington, New Zealand
Learn about: Disaster communications, public affairs responses, crisis communication best practice.
For:
Communications professionals
Emergency services professionals
Response and recovery agencies
Public information managers
Public relations practitioners
Researchers
Social media specialists
Community engagement
With recent catastrophic events occurring across Australia and New Zealand, the importance of strong crisis communications is more prevalent than ever. The Emergency Media & Public Affairs (EMPA) is the only representative organisation of emergency service and disaster communications practitioners in the world. Their conferences held in Australia and New Zealand assist with empowering communications professionals to deliver the right message to their audience during and after an emergency or crisis.
As a comms professional, communicating with employees, stakeholders, and lifeline organisations is critical to the resilience and safety of communities. During times of crisis, there is a highlighted need for communications that can influence individuals and organisations to make necessary decisions, quickly and comprehensively.
The rationale behind this event is to benchmark the best media liaison and public affairs responses to disaster across Australasia for comms professionals in emergency services, response and recovery agencies, public relations and similar.
Event details:31 March - 2 April 2020. Melbourne Australia
Learn about: Stakeholder management, strengthening leadership skills, measuring value of external communications.
For:
Corporate Communications
Internal Communications
External Communications
Corporate Affairs
Media
Employee Communications
Public Relations
Marketing
Human resources
Investor relations
From Industries:
Manufacturing
Retail
Banking and Insurance
Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals
Telecommunications
Aviation
Engineering and Construction
Government
Leisure and hospitality
Law enforcement
As a comms professional, it's important to understand how to effectively build and execute corporate communications and social media strategies. It’s also essential to keep brand loyalty during disruptions in the market and throughout organisational change.
Establishing trust and transparency in brands through social media and corporate communications is equally important and this event will ensure you are equipped with all the tools required to execute effectively.
The most innovative strategies are explored to strengthen leadership skills in communication and address real-world challenges and opportunities.
Targeted to corporate leaders in today’s digitally connected world, the key drivers of this forum are:
Maximising stakeholder engagement through storytelling and humanising the narrative being told
Building agile communications teams
Measuring value and effectiveness of external communications.
Event details: 20 - 21 May 2020. Sydney, Australia
Learn about: Storytelling the in Corporate communication, crisis communication, reputation and social media
For:
Corporate Communications
Internal Communications
External Communications
Corporate affairs
Investor relations
Government relations
PR and public policy
This event focuses on insights to influence, and discusses the forces affecting the corporate affairs and communication landscape. From discussing ideologies and the divergence of civil discourse, to artificial intelligence solutions and the frameworks of communication.
The practice of corporate affairs holds the main responsibility for everything related to internal and external communications, government relations, PR and public policy. Corporate affairs now includes an added challenge of relaying those messages in various channels to accommodate business’ inevitable leap into digital.
Although corporate affairs continues to evolve and differs across various sectors, the goal is the same: to effectively communicate a message to the right audience.
Attendees are screened for seniority, so you can be assured you’re networking with similar minds shaping business today. Whether they’re users, consultants, channel partners or dealers, the Corporate Affairs Summit generates countless opportunities to learn, network, explore and to keep up to date with all that is taking place in the field.
Event details: 24-26 March 2020. Wellington, New Zealand
Learn about: Social media content, social storytelling, social media strategy
For:
Social Media Manager
Social Media Specialist
Communications Advisor
Digital Communications Manager
Optimising social media is a critical tool for the New Zealand government sector.
By attending this event, you will gain an understanding on how to find your target audience and learn what resonates with them using social media analytics - (to ensure your messaging cuts through the noise.)
Discussions will include the significant challenges being faced today across social media and how they’re being addressed. Appropriate strategies and technology options are uncovered to demonstrate where the impact and value of social media efforts can be improved.
As building and maintaining a two-way dialogue on social media is imperative to improving service delivery and citizen satisfaction. This event will provide insight into the most innovative strategies to maximise social media success, how to create a personalised approach and connect experience whilst driving trust and confidence in government.
Event details: 12-15 October 2020. Auckland, New Zealand
Learn about: Building authentic relationships, communicating across cultures, Public Relations strategy.
For:
Public Relations
Communications Manager
Internal Communications
External Communications
PR and public policy
The World Public Relations Forum will explore the theme ‘connecting with courage’ through the four lenses of conscience, culture, capability and courage. It will reflect on key topics and trends that matter to the global communications community while also drawing on New Zealand’s ingenuity, creativity, and diversity to generate inspiring conversations.
Media today
As a PR or media communications professional, you’re the first to know when something important happens. You get the critical head start needed to course correct, alert the right people to target their efforts more effectively.
With the transition to a digital news environment, challenges to contemporary journalism have emerged due to a 24/7 news cycle. The new model of assertion means news is disseminated as fast as possible instead of an overarching concern surrounding the value of accuracy.
Attending any of the above events would be beneficial for a PR or communications professional as various strategies and operational phenomena are uncovered. These strategies will assist with effective communication and help with the leadership of media enterprises.
"
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The top 7 events for media professionals in ANZ in 2020
With a new year brings new organisational goals and strategies. To help you achieve success in 2020, we have chosen the top 7 events for PR and Communications professionals to attend across Australia and New Zealand.
I crowd-sourced some opinions on ‘how PR has evolved’ via Facebook before this article was penned, and ‘chaotically’, ‘always-on’, ‘unpredictably’ and ‘intense’ were among some of the top keywords surfaced. Exactly how fast is the news-making cycle today? I’ve experienced it first-hand a couple of weeks ago.
By 11 am on the same day, three interview requests had arrived via Facebook Messenger from three different publications. By 2 pm, all interviews were completed on WhatsApp and my name appeared in the papers on the very next day. The whole event took place in less than 24 hours.
This is a glimpse of how news is made in this day and age. Journalists today are online and on social media; they are following key opinion leaders (KOLs) to get opinions. Gone are the days when they relied solely on press releases and spokesperson soundbites to write news and when public opinion was easier to gauge as people were only accessing a handful of mediums to receive information.
The convergence of digital, social and mobile has added layers of complexity in PR and clearly disrupted the practice, as news today becomes 24×7 and travels across the globe at the speed of the internet. The infamous United Airline incident for example, although happened in Chicago, created an uproar and boycott in China and trended in the top news on Weibo, all because of the power of social media.
The rise of digital and social certainly has benefited PR by creating the direct relationships with people, rather than requiring a media filter. To fully unleash its benefits, the best PR talents should strike the balance between creating content that people actually want to read, listen to or watch, and providing what traditional journalism would consider “news.”
With a good piece of content and story at the core, PR professionals are required to have the ability to navigate an increasingly complex media environment and to embrace the beauty of digital and social to enhance storytelling.
Instead of issuing a formal corporate announcement, why not consider tapping on Facebook Live for product launches and public activations? OCBC Bank recently launched its Stay True campaign via Facebook Live, where the bank’s Head of Consumer Financial Services was put through a lie detector test. The video garnered over 200,000 view to date.
Another example of leveraging digital to innovate traditional PR approach is a revamp of online corporate newsrooms. Dynamic Newsroom is a mash-up of PR, content and digital, which is designed to drive engagement, not simply overload information. It takes the best of everything we know about media relations and hosting content online, to more effectively connect brands with journalists.
Having talked about the benefits and opportunities, I also would like to caution that this trend of digital and social convergence also poses certain threats.
As social media increasingly becomes a main source of news and information and due to the fact that most social media content is user-generated, in order to boost visibility and garner likes and shares, brands and citizen journalists have been noticed to use unethical techniques to make their content exciting or ‘viral’. Such fake news and clickbait headlines are detrimental to brand reputation and consumer trust.
With great power comes great responsibility. The ability to earn credibility becomes even more important in an era of round-the-clock marketing messages. PR is becoming even more important and relevant than ever as the most reliable voice.
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Blog
The relevance of PR in the age of digital, social & citizen journalism
I crowd-sourced some opinions on ‘how PR has evolved’ via Facebook before this article was penned, and ‘chaotically’, ‘always-on’, ‘unpredictably’ and ‘intense’ were among some of the top keywords surfaced. Exactly how fast is the news-making cycle today? I’ve experienced it first-hand a couple of weeks ago.