Justin Rubner

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Did Someone Mention Social Search?

In public relations, social media on 10/28/2011 at 3:09 pm

If you’re using Google Alerts or individual sites to monitor what’s being said in the social-media sphere about a company, product, person or topic, you’re probably wasting time. More importantly, though, you’re probably missing critical sentiment.

That’s because Google, even with recent social-media enhancements, isn’t as good as a site that focuses on social-media search. And searching every site is near impossible.

There are plenty of media-monitoring services that are great for keeping track of realtime social-media sentiment for B2B companies, such as Radian6. But if you don’t need that kind of serious automated capability, there are free sites that are actually quite good.

I recently tested a bunch for a PR agency, using the terms “Salesforce.com”, “Reed Hastings” and “software analytics”. You might think these sites would be more or less the same. They’re not.

Here are six that stood out, ranked from best to worst:

  1. Social Mention
  2. WhosTalkin.com
  3. Addict-o-matic
  4. 48ers
  5. Surchur.com
  6. Joongel

The last two, Joongel and Surchur.com, offered little B2B value.

Joongel, “Internet, the easy way,” is a simple web application for searching and navigating through the most popular sources on the Internet in different categories. The service says its search method is based on the geographic location of the user and traffic-ranking analysis. Sources include every major one except Facebook and LinkedIn. After a test, nothing came up for “salesforce.com” or “Reed Hastings”. Plus, it seemed glitchy at times.

Surchur.com, which describes itself as “realtime discovery, realtime search and realtime social,” is catered to seeing what’s trending more than anything. For most B2B applications, it has limited results. But it could be powerful for consumer issues.

Now on to the good ones. The one site I’d recommend somewhat is 48ers. Bottom line: Wasn’t great, wasn’t bad.

48ers, “which was created to help you search for what’s happening right now,” says it trawls conversations from all the major social networks to bring back “nuggets of information” to help you:

  • Discover what people are saying about your company or brand.
  • Find out what other people think of the TV shows you’re watching.
  • Be the first to find out about breaking news stories.
  • Tap into the public mood about the latest sporting events.

Sources include Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz (no thanks!), Digg and Delicious.

The site ranks searches by time posted and displays them in a  Google-like format. Searches on the three topics yielded somewhat relevant and timely results, but they weren’t as exact as I was hoping for.

As for usability, Twitter results, perhaps because of the sheer amount of content, vastly outrank other results on the first page, so you have to click the other sources to see them. That’s a bit cumbersome and not really practical.

There are better social media search sites, including…

Addict-o-matic is pretty good and the most fun

Addict-o-matic

Addict-o-matic, the coolest-looking site of the bunch, “searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images.”  It’s the “perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what’s up, what’s now or what other people are feeding on,” the site says.

Sources include Google Blogs, WordPress, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Wikio, Ask.com, Friendfeed and more…but no Facebook or LinkedIn. It also searches regular engines such as Google News.

My observations? WordPress results are old and seem to have no ranking logic. Google Blogs results, however, are up to date and seem comprehensive. Twitter also seems up to date—latest post was 8 minutes old.

Usability was strong. It’s visually appealing and intuitive with its modular design. You can select which sources to use and can bookmark search terms and settings. It’s a bit annoying that the results contain so few words—you have to actually click the link to get a real view on what’s being said. It’s particularly nice, however, to come back to the site to have the results waiting for you.

Upsides? Segmented results, tremendous flexibility in searching, strong search capabilities, and a fun user experience.

The downsides? No LinkedIn or Facebook and having to click onto the actual sites.

WhosTalkin.com has the best Facebook and LinkedIn results

Who’sTalkin.com

Who’sTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics they care about most, “whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name.”

Sources include 60 sites, including Facebook and LinkedIn.

WhosTalkin.com breaks searches down by category, like  Social Mention, which is analyzed below, and you can also search by source. Twitter results were only 10 seconds old. Facebook results all seemed timely and relevant. The LinkedIn search was also solid. (I must say that in the weeks following this analysis, search results have occasionally taken a long time).

As for usability, it doesn’t look impressive, but this site is the only one reviewed that delivered consistent results for all major networks. However, subsequent uses have yielded painfully slow results.

Upsides would be that its sources include Facebook and LinkedIn.

Downsides would be that you can’t create alerts, it’s slow sometimes, and is just an average user experience.

Social Mention

Social Mention has the most capability

Social Mention is the clear winner here, although I also like Addict-o-matic and WhosTalkin.com. Social Mention describes itself as a “social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time.”

Sources seem to include every major social site, including Facebook and LinkedIn. Plus it offers basic sentiment analysis capability (you should check it out), daily social media alerts and a buzz widget.

On a search for “salesforce.com”, with a parameter of the last 24 hours, it brought up 97 Twitter results, 26 Stumbleupon results, three for Bing, one for Facebook and one for Google Blogs. However, another search did not deliver any Facebook results and a subsequent search brought up 19.

The sentiment analysis section is impressive looking, but it would take repeated use to determine how accurate it really is. It can tell you how many results appear to be negative, neutral or positive. Given recent bad publicity around Netflix, the sentiment analysis for its CEO, Reed Hastings, seems as if it would be pretty accurate.

Rather than separating by source, Social Mention lets users search by category, such as blogs and networks, which actually makes  sense. If you want, you can click the individual source after a search.

For some reason, Facebook results were glitchy. Sometimes they showed up. Other times they didn’t. But that could very well be an anomaly. I can deal with this, though.

Another great feature of Social Mention are alerts, which are like Google Alerts, but they are, as of this writing, not available.

As with anything free, no site is perfect. The site with the most power, functionality and context is Social Mention. The site that has the best Facebook and LinkedIn results, at least during this testing, was WhosTalkin.com. The best user experience, especially if you want instant results automatically, is Addict-o-matic…but it has limited sources and is the distant runner-up.

For those who want just basic social-media monitoring, would like some sentiment analysis, and don’t mind a little manual effort, your search should end at Social Mention.

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What Pink Floyd Can Teach Us About PR

In marketing strategy, public relations, social media on 08/16/2011 at 9:00 am

Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe PR people aren’t good at publicizing the benefits of PR. Either way, the longer I spend in this industry, the more I’m reminded of one of my favorite Pink Floyd-isms:

“If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

In this case, the meat represents tactics: A strong message, solid writing, thought leadership, press relations, social media.

The pudding is the reward: More conversions, name recognition, instant credibility, media coverage, brand engagement.

So many companies spend all of their resources on direct product marketing and collateral and expect big returns. These tactics are crucial. If done well, they will help increase name recognition.

But as I often tell clients, PR accomplishes this goal and establishes credibility. Social media, on the other hand, brings brand engagement to the mix. And a strong message? It’s the glue that holds everything together.

If you ignore or even downplay these tactics, how many rewards are you potentially missing?

After all, any company can advertise. But when a company is mentioned in a respected news outlet, it establishes an instant reputation that no ad, press release or whitepaper can. And when a company is doing a good job at social media, it’s  engaging people–exponentially–in a way no story can.

However, if you’re contributing to only part of this list, your marketing efforts will likely suffer. All social media and no PR will not garner nearly as much credibility. All PR and no social delivers little engagement. A strong message with no way to promote it is downright useless. And a strong promotional machine with no message is like yelling in the wind. In Northern Saskatchewan.

In other words, strive for balance.

My recommendations:

  1. Develop a core message that resonates with potential clients.
  2. Develop talking points for media relations.
  3. Use this messaging consistently.
  4. Write well. The other day, I read a case study with a major grammatical error in the lead sentence. Almost as bad, it, like many others, was mind-numbingly dry. There’s no reason for either. Bad grammar or dry writing negatively impacts your image or at the very least causes people to not read your material.
  5. Focus your PR efforts on thought leadership, accomplishments and near-term expansion plans–not your product.
  6. Identify trade publications and opportunities for coverage.
  7. Identify local media outlets, paying close attention to editorial calendars. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll be seen as too small by getting local coverage. Unless it’s a story on your company picnic, local coverage–from small capital raises to large expansions–establishes credibility.
  8. Identify national mainstream outlets that cover your industry. Don’t think you absolutely can’t get national coverage. That’s where your focus on thought leadership will help.
  9. Don’t treat social media as a push channel. If you’re not finding ways to engage people, you’re really not using it to your full advantage.
  10. Find ways to promote marketing collateral such as whitepapers through PR and social channels.
  11. Find ways to make your company more than just another brick in the wall.

- Justin Rubner

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Reporter: Leave Your Number Twice and Don’t Pitch Me on Your Green Building

In public relations on 07/12/2011 at 4:52 pm

If you’re involved with any aspect of public relations, you know that contacting journalists can be daunting.

How do you get their attention? How should you handle an exclusive? Should you call in the morning or afternoon? Should you contact a reporter or editor? How do you get them to write about your wonderfully-efficient environmentally-friendly office?

The other day, I discussed this issue with my pal and former colleague, Rachel Tobin, who covers commercial real estate for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Here are some of her friendly tips:

AJC reporter Rachel Tobin

Leave your phone number twice. Tobin, like many reporters, receives scores of tips and pitches every day. Make hers and all reporters’ lives easier by leaving your contact info at the beginning of your voicemail and at the end. She finds it particularly annoying to listen through a lengthy voicemail only to have to listen to it again to hear the number. She also recommends making sure your email system is set to show your contact info on every message. This is plain good advice for all business communications.

Write a compelling subject in the email. Seriously–they get pitched every day, so write your news as succinctly as possible in the title. “Unless I already know you, I’m probably not going to open an email that just says ‘press release,’ Tobin says. “It’s amazing how many people do this. It’s the biggest rookie mistake in my opinion.”

Paste and attach your release. Tobin recommends pasting it on the bottom and attaching it. I would also recommend summarizing the news–targeting it–for the reporter in your lead sentence.

Know the best time to call. That’s usually in the morning. Deadlines are often at the end of the day and reporters are busy fielding calls related to stories and making appropriate edits. Although the affable Tobin wouldn’t likely yell at you if you bothered her with a bad pitch 30 minutes before deadline, I’ve worked with plenty of reporters who would. In Tobin’s case, anytime after 3 is not a great time to call, especially on Wednesdays when Sunday stories are due, she says.

Don’t go over their heads. If you have a story you think is newsworthy for someone’s beat, don’t pitch the editor on getting the reporter to cover it. I despised that practice when I was a reporter. Tobin dislikes it too. Even if a reporter happens to make an error on a story, contact him or her first, she says.

Follow reporters on social sites. Some people only let personal friends on Facebook, others invite anyone. Today, most reporters have Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles and more. This will not only help you keep track of recent stories but will give you an easier way to contact them. P.S., Tobin asked me to include a contact link to the AJC editorial staff, which is a bit hard to find, even harder to find on other outlets’ sites, so here it is. “We want you to follow us,” she says. “We’re using social media a lot. I really hope my sources would follow me.”

Watch overly-creative pitches. The best PR people, she says, are creative. But she also dislikes “gidgets and gadgets” to get her attention. I don’t have specific advice on this one; just realize their job is to find newsworthy stories and that they’re often pressed for time to do so, receive tons of pitches, and are desensitized to gimmicks.

Write good press releases. I’m so glad she brought this one up. So many press releases I read are awful. Just awful. Often, she has to do basic fact-finding on news in press releases–simple stuff like sale price, who the previous owner of a building was, and square footage. “Most press releases are so badly written, they’re a waste of time,” Tobin says. “Some just make PR people look bad.”

Know what an exclusive is. She says an exclusive is not first dibs on useless news or news that’s been reported elsewhere. “Most PR people who pitch us on exclusives aren’t giving us real news,” Tobin says. “It has to be interesting. Also make sure it’s really an exclusive before you pitch it as such. Even if we’re the first ‘mainstream’ pub to get it, and a trade got it first, it’s not a clean kill.”

Know what news is. In a previous post, I offer tips on pitching reporters and lament some of the bad pitches I received, including one on how some company installed green toilets. Well, green buildings aren’t that exciting either.

“In this day and age of real estate, the fact that you want to make your building green is not interesting,” Tobin says. ”It’s fluff and just trying to make your company feel good. In addition, we’re not interested in anything ‘in the weeds.’ We’re a general-interest newspaper. We aren’t going to write about the intricacies of real estate law.”

- Justin Rubner

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