On Friday, June 18, at Digital Capital Week (#dcweek), Zenzi Communications will share the top tips and best practices for “PR in a Digital World.”  As marketing and PR are changing rapidly with the constant evolution and expansion of the digital ecosystem, success requires integrated efforts that combine the smartest tactics in traditional PR combined with online marketing and SEO practices. The Internet has changed how we receive information, how we interact and engage with each other, with brands and with media. PR is a critical aspect of the marketing mix and there are fundamental shifts in strategy and approach that Zenzi, an integrated marketing & PR agency, will share at this workshop.

With smaller staffs in traditional media newsrooms, many more ways to communicate, and consumers taking control of their incoming information flow, it is imperative to maintain a two-way dialogue with your target audience.  Keep in mind that everyone is a journalist now and each individual should be treated that way.

Below are the top 10 tips (some old, some new) that should be utilized in a cohesive manner together to achieve your communications goals in today’s marketplace:

1. Know your audience

2. Develop and communicate a clear and consistent message

3. Create and maintain relationships

4. Be authentic & credible

5. Engage & entertain your audience with big ideas and valuable insight

6. Learn how to use digital tools

7. Communicate using multiple touch-points

8. Manage your reputation proactively through online word of mouth

9. Create a crisis PR plan

10. Combine and strategically merge SEO and PR efforts

If you are attending Digital Capital Week, be sure to register for this session to learn more about the new PR landscape and digital ecosystem.  For more information or to register visit http://schedule.digitalcapitalweek.org/event/e2204cd37a3fe0bf055d0d649b4cbba0.

Before diving into this gold-mine of digital marketing tips and tricks, and depending on how brave you are, click here to take our quiz and we will send you personalized results to find out if your efforts and knowledge add up to classify you as a Digital Daredevil! Then, continue on below for an overview of our recommendations to make you a digital marketing superstar.

DIGITAL MARKETING ESSENTIALS

Don’t attempt to tame the brave world of digital PR and marketing without mastering the basics first. Get your campaigns up to speed with these helpful tips from Zenzi:

Start with a Strategy

Digital marketing offers a multitude of opportunities for businesses to establish immediate and real-time relationships with customers, deepen connection and engagement, drive feedback and positive word of mouth and strengthen your brand.  And just like any other important business initiative, it takes advance planning to define your target audience and business objectives. Study your customers and see how they are behaving and interacting using various social media channels. What are their habits? How can you participate in their conversations in a way that adds value? Before you dive in, you should document your approach, objectives and success metrics for each different medium.

Those of us who have been around the block know that in the not too distant past, the gold standard by which to measure public relations success was “The Ink”.  Back then, “ink” could mean an article in a magazine or newspaper, or broadcast coverage during a morning news broadcast, but either way, measuring success was fairly simple.  How many people read the paper?  Check it off.  You’ve got measurable impressions.  How many people watch the news program?  Yep, that’s also easy to track and measure.

Even better, marketing executives understood “ink”.  Similar to the tried and true measurement of advertising efficiency, everyone inherently grasped that when X number of people read a publication, that equals X number of eyeballs on your brand and your message.  And an eyeball is an eyeball is an eyeball.

But even then, before social media came along and changed PR measurement forever, there was that little voice, the one we all heard but most ignored, that said “But, but…. Aren’t SOME media impressions better than others?  Why do we count an eyeball on the Oprah Winfrey show in the same way we count an eyeball on the 39^th page of an obscure medical journal?”.  Enter “advertising equivalency”, which is yet another (old school) tool in our arsenal to attempt something that is at the heart of one of the biggest hot button in the PR industry today:  Quality of Impressions.

**Gulp**.  Yep, I said it.  Everyone say hello to the elephant in the room.  And guess what?  With social media playing such a huge part in our marketing plans, that elephant is getting bigger. And louder.

Sure, there are lots of reputable, established companies that are devoted to measuring social media success.  There are algorithms, programs, click-thru tracking, verbatim transcriptions of online discussions….  Whatever the method, all are attempting to remove some of the mystery and nail down the value of social media impressions, ie:  the “ink” of the current millennium.

Hey, I’m not knocking it.  We use these methods of measuring social media for our clients, too.  They are the tools that are currently available to us.  But the discussion we keep having, the one that spawns a lot of hand gesturing, raised voices and debate in the halls of Zenzi, is this one:

How do we measure the value of a conversation? Because truly, the simple act of conversing over a digital platform has changed everything.  Forever.

Think of it this way:  You have a problem.  What is more useful to you personally?  Reading about the topic in a newspaper (ie:  static information), or talking to a group of people who have been there, experienced what you’ve experienced, and come out the other side?  No question, right?

So, think of traditional media (conveying information) and social media (sharing and discussing information) in the same way.   It’s not just about eyeballs vs. eyeballs anymore.  Would you rather have 10,000 people simply read your message, or 1,000 people talk passionately about it? What is worth more to you as a marketer?   Even better, can you put a number on it?

We’d love to hear what you think.  Post your comments, and we’ll be writing future entries based on your thoughts.  It’s an ongoing conversation, right?  Let’s get going.

            Social media is always fun and games, until someone (a.k.a. Nestle) gets hurt (a.k.a. suffers an onslaught of Twitter and Facebook accusations by environmental activists). In essence, protesters are claiming that by purchasing palm-oil from an Indonesian company, Nestle is aiding to the devastation of Indonesia’s rain forest, accelerating global warming and endangering orangutans. The Wall Street Journal explains that Nestle’s Facebook and Twitter pages have been overrun by these criticisms, prompting Nestle to react rather defensively.

          This social media explosion has prompted many of us to wonder; what is the appropriate and most effective way to deal with social media crisis? Is there a handbook somewhere? Jeremiah Owyang of  Web Strategy tackles the issue of crisis planning and preparation.

We loved this handy guide to the social landscape from CMO.com.