Posts Tagged ‘Flickr’


Even Santa Can Use Some Good PR and Marketing

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

At the PRSA 2010 International Conference opening reception, Eric Schwartzman introduced me to Santa’s PR guy, Maj. Brian Martin, deputy chief of staff for communications at NORAD and USNORTHCOM. Ok, he’s not really Santa’s personal public relations consultant, but he does handle PR for NORAD Tracks Santa, and the program has a great PR story to share.

The history behind the 2009 campaign:

Over 50 years ago, a local department store advertised for kids to call Santa on a special “hotline,” but they accidently used the number for the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). Col. Harry Shoup, received the first call and told his staff to put the rest through. They confirmed Santa’s location via radar, and the tradition of tracking Santa was born. CONAD is now the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM).  NORAD volunteers still take calls, but they also answer emails and respond to social media posts from kids all over the world who want to know when Santa will be coming down their chimney.

As of November 19, 2009, Stacey Knott, public affairs, social media officer, NORAD and USNORTHCOM says, NORAD Tracks Santa had 719 Facebook fans, and a minimal presence on Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and YouTube. For the 2009 holiday season, they wanted to increase communication with their audiences, improve awareness, and drive traffic to the NORAD Tracks Santa website. Additionally, they looked to increase awareness of NORAD’s brand and mission notes Maj. Michael Humpreys, public affairs officer, NORAD and USNORTHCOM.

Results from the 2009 campaign:

  • As of January 1, 2010, NORAD Tracks Santa’s Facebook page had 417,608 fans.
  • 13 million unique visitors from over 200 countries visited the NORAD Tracks Santa website.
  • The NORAD NORTHCOM Facebook page went from 447 fans on October 1, 2009 to 5,911 on January 1, 2010.
  • As of November 29, 2010, there 17,579 likes for NORAD NORTHCOM on Facebook.
  • The NORAD website typically has 1,000-3,000 visitors per day. On Christmas Eve 2009, the website had over 90,000 visitors and over 85,000 of them were unique visitors.

Preparing for the 2010 season:

NORAD Tracks Santa is a volunteer operation, so NORAD relies on many partners to help create the website, keep the website from crashing, and help strategize on other tactics.  For 2010, some local Colorado schools are helping to develop games for the website. And for 26 hours over the eve of Santa’s arrival, the command staff, families, and other volunteers will run the command center phones and monitor social media to answer questions. Martin says it has been a great way for NORAD/USNORTHCOM to spread goodwill.

“The memories of NORAD Tracks Santa are a real tradition in people’s homes,” says Knott. She goes on to say, you have to believe in Santa after you volunteer to help.

For social media, Humphreys says they decided to focus on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, where they have the most activity – although they previously had a presence on Flickr and LinkedIn. Since they post pictures to Facebook, using Flickr seemed redundant.  YouTube is the second most used search site, and they have a lot of activity on there.

All of the NORAD Tracks Santa social media sites and website are “family friendly.” Knott confirmed they spend a lot of time checking to ensure people are not posting mean, ugly posts, or profanity. In the video above, Maj. Martin discusses addressing issues on social media.

NORAD Tracks Santa’s Strategies, Tips and Best Practices—

  • Link back to the main website as often as possible
  • Have a consistent message across all media (mainstream media and social media)
  • Encourage interaction by looking for questions and try to respond to as many posts as possible
  • Further the conversation
  • Interact quickly
  • Have an engagement protocol and enforce it
  • Be trusting
  • Continue engagement throughout the year
  • Post pictures and videos

Humphreys says success comes from constant engagement on social media. Martin adds that NORAD Tracks Santa continues mainstream media outreach to print and web publications and with satellite media tours for broadcast stations.

I know I have great memories of watching the news to learn when Santa might be coming to my house. Do you have similar memories?

The BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers would like to hear how you’ve taken an old program and made it fresh with social media. Do you have any tips to share?

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, News Coverage, Public Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Pitching the Media: Brooke Siegel, DailyCandy, and Jake Dobkin, Gothamist, Share Tips At Bulldog Media Relations Summit

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

by Colleen Flood*

The timing for the “Meet the Editors” roundtable at the Bulldog Media Relations Summit could not have been a better follow up to my BurrellesLuce colleague Tressa Robbins’ recent post, What Journalist Really Want from PR People. In fact, I had the opportunity to moderate two roundtables with journalists of highly regarded outlets. The morning session was with Brooke Siegel, entertainment editor of DailyCandy.com, and the afternoon session JournalistTakingNoteswas with was Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist.com.  Both conveyed similar messages about pitching:

  • Provide simple, concise details of what they need to write the story
  • Send the type of story their outlet would include

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes a PR person can make when pitching is sending the finished product. I heard from Dobkin and Siegel that “almost never do they use the ‘story’ as you send it.” And I am sure that most journalists would probably agree.  Instead, they recommend “sending the details” and then “they will write the title and the story.”  Be specific with details, especially in the subject line.  Just be sure you don’t include the entire press release (in the subject line) – Siegel joked that this has happened to her and reached for her BlackBerry to show us, then remembered she had deleted it!

For Jake the details he must have include pictures, illustrations, or video.  Since Gothamist.com is a blog it is important to lure the reader with visuals.  Without any it is likely he will not do the story.  Just don’t send large files. Instead provide photos via a “photo-drop box” like Flickr.

According to Dobkin, PR and media relations professionals should also know before pitching Gothamist.com that:

  • Gothamist.com does 10 posts/day
  • Audience is 18-34 year olds known as “affluent hipsters”
  • Contact via email tips [at] gothamist.com
  • Don’t call us – we’ll call you.  Trust us, you will receive a call if we need additional information
  • Provide videos via YouTube or embed with a code

As far as getting your story picked up by DailyCandy.com, Siegel provides some specifics:

  • Dailycandy.com is committed to covering what’s new and undiscovered in 11 cities
  • Audience is primarily geared towards women regarding fashion, food, and fun
  • Exclusives are welcome
  • They have a “deals email” that is a great way to establish brands
  • No “enter to win” or giveaways
  • How-to videos are welcome
  • Always include a website; this is the “biggest business card you have”

It was a pleasure to meet Siegel and Dobkin in person.  They are real people who work very hard to get their stories out to their audiences.  And while some of their points were specific to their publications, I think the biggest lesson they offered was to remind participants how important it is to “research and know the outlet you are pitching.” Now, that’s a takeaway any savvy professional working with the media would do well to heed.   

Are you pitching journalists they way they want to be pitched? What tips have journalists and bloggers given you for working with the media? Share your thoughts with the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

***

 *Bio: Colleen Flood has been a sales consultant with BurrellesLuce for over 12 years and is eager to become a more integrated part of the social-public relations community. She primarily handles agency relations in the New York and New Jersey metro-area. She is not only passionate about work, but also about family, friends, and the Jersey Shore. Twitter: @cgflood LinkedIn: Colleen Flood Facebook: BurrellesLuce

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Industry Events, Media Outreach, Media Relations, Public Relations | 6 Comments »

Social Media – Is There a Payday?

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Gail Nelson
Surprisingly (at least to me) this debate is going strong in some very influential places. Chris Brogan, for one, may harbor some doubts, at least as it pertains to selling Ford Fiestas. His post, “The Real Meat of the Question” was spurred by the post, “Can Social Media Make Us Buy More Cars?,” in which Pete Cashmore discusses Ford’s experiment: the automaker has given 100 active web citizens free use of a Ford Fiesta for six months. The participants agree to post about their experience to Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and YouTube. It’s clearly a blatant grab for buzz (and it’s working – look at all these blog posts!), but will this new campaign generate new sales?  

In the meantime, Chris asks his readers to weigh in on the ability of social media to drive sales. I jumped to comment last night, and put a firm stake in the ground, saying that social media participation (in Twitter and LinkedIn, in particular) by BurrellesLuce folks has resulted in sales. Is it a “paid” program, like Ford’s? No. (We blog and tweet as individuals and participate in the conversions at large.) Has our participation in the PR community resulted in a boatload of sales? Not yet, but it’s growing. Is the cost per sale reasonable? It’s hard to say. We haven’t tracked and valued the time of all who monitor, participate and respond to prospects and customers on social networks. But we do know it’s been an effective final touch point in a number of cases.  And we are pleased to be able to put personal faces on the brand we’ve spent years to build.

So, what do you think? Will a “paid” social media buzz creation campaign sell cars, or would only a more organic effort move the needle? And If you decided to ramp up your participation in social media  - whether or not you “seed” the conversation the way Ford is – would you have the systems in place – both monitoring and measurement – to be able to answer the question, “Does social media have a payday?”

twitter-background.jpg

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Public Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Crisis Management: A Publicist’s Dream

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Valerie Simon

“You haven’t seen the news yet, have you?” my mother-in-law asked. I glanced at my husband in fear, bracing for the worst. Was it related to the economy? Had there been a terrorist attack? A natural disaster?

“It’s a miracle,” she said, and continued on to tell us the story of Flight 1549. As she explained that everyone on the plane would survive, I looked down at my daughter (just one day old, and the reason I had been “disconnected” from the BurrellesLuce and the media for the past 24 hours) and smiled. The rest of the world was being reminded of something I already knew. Miracles do happen.

But how do PR practitioners, particularly those in an industry poised to manage crisis/disaster situations, handle an accident where no one is injured and it appears that no one is to blame?  In the past year, US Airways has certainly had to navigate their fair share of media coverage; the airline filed for bankruptcy, lost baggage and became the first airline to start charging for coffee, tea and bottled water. While an accident certainly is not something that can be promoted as good news, in this particular case, a “feel good” story emerged.

The accident occurred at approximately 3:03 pm EST, and immediately the PR team went into action. Beginning at 4:12 pm, time-stamped press releases were issued on their website and information continued to be released consistently during the rest of the afternoon/ evening and into the coming days. US Airways took command of the situation by communicating details about the accident, the aircraft, and the passengers, as well as the steps that they were taking (activating a team of trained employee volunteers to help those affected by the accident, working with the NTSB), and so forth.

As details regarding the jet’s engine compressor failure two days before the crash came out, U.S Airways continued to focus on how they were handling the situation (sending $5,000 checks to each of the 150 passengers on Flight 1549 to compensate them for lost luggage and other belongings,  reimbursing passengers for their ticket costs, among other things). And of course, touting the professional crew and thanking the public for the outpouring of support.

The story that emerged is the “Miracle on the Hudson,” where the focus continues to be on the tremendous accomplishment of Captain Sullenberger, and the lives spared. In a January 16th The New York Times article, Howard J. Rubenstein, called Captain Sullenberger a “publicist’s dream.” The New York Times also noted that the airline’s share price shot up 13 percent the day after Flight 1549 crashed.

Not surprisingly, coverage of the incident was first recorded by citizen journalists (via Flickr), followed ten minutes later by the websites of traditional media, and another 5 minutes later by the US Airways website. If you are curious to review how the media coverage of the crisis played out, Brendan Hodgson, VP Digital, Hill and Knowlton Canada, posted a “US Airways Crash 1549 Online Analysis” on Slideshare.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Media Outreach, Media Relations, News Coverage, Public Relations | No Comments »

Next