PR | Media Culpa

Nissan in new Australian social media backlash

Yesterday we heard about the Qantas Twitter competition that failed – the so-called “epic PR fail” where angry customers kidnapped the hashtag #qantasluxury with nasty comments. Today we hear of yet another Australian social media campaign that didn’t end the way the company anticipated. Nissan Australia launched a Facebook competition called “Micraspotting” in which you could win a a $1250 voucher or a grand prize, which was a brand new car worth $20,000.

The problem was that the person that won the car was a good friend of the Nissan employee who ran the Facebook competition (calling him his BFF, best friend forever, on his blog). The $1250 voucher was also awarded to a person who is a Facebook friend of the same Nissan employee. Nissan was honest about the connection when they announced the winner and said, “The reality is that he won fair and square and all is fully above board.”

That didn’t stop consumers from saying that the competition was rigged and posting angry comments to the Facebook walls of Nissan Australia and Nissan Micra Australia.

People are really angry and Nissan aren’t responding very well to the comments. Almost no communication at all from the company to the Facebook fury. Instead, what do they do? Launch another competition! Do you think that competition is recieved well? No, of course not.

What Nissan should do is take a step back, withdraw plans for any new competitions and handle the reactions from angry fans before launching a new PR stunt. Not well done.

Update: See Nissans’ response in the comments.

Optimizing press release content for social sharing pays off

The concept of social media releases and social media newsrooms is not new. By adding photos, videos and audio and easy sharing functionality, the chances that the content is spread across different social media channels increase. At least, that’s what we have been arguing for several years. Now there is also a study that confirms this notion.

PR Newswire and Crowd Factory looked at tens of thousands of press releases, to analyze where, when and how news releases were shared across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The findings are really interesting and I include the key conclusions from the analysis below:

1. Each press release share generates 2 new views; expands total audience by 70%.

Creating shareable content and enabling sharing capabilities through the relevant channels can dramatically increase the number of views for releases. PR Newswire and Crowd Factory found that each share generates an average of nearly 2 click-backs to the original press release. Additionally, sharing of press releases across social networks increases the total audience, or social reach, for this content by nearly 70 percent.

2. Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter sharing drives more traffic.

Among the three largest U.S. social networks, Facebook is tops when it comes to sharing of press releases: 48 percent of press release sharing happens on Facebook, 37 percent of sharing happens on Twitter and 15 percent happens on LinkedIn.

But not all shares are created equal: in spite of Facebook’s greater popularity for sharing, each share on Twitter actually drives about 30 percent more press release views than a share on Facebook.

3. Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

Not surprisingly, multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases. Adding a photo to a press release increases engagement by 14 percent; adding a video and a photo actually doubles the engagement rate. Press releases that contain photos, video and audio generate the most engagement, with 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

Four Swedish PR agencies on Holmes Report’s Top 250 Global Rankings

The Holmes Report has just published its Top 250 Global Rankings of the world’s leading PR agencies. Edelman moves ut two spots to claim the number one position this year at the expense of Weber Shandwick. Fleishman-Hillard drops one place from second to third this year.

Four Swedish based PR agencies are among the 250 top agencies on the list. KREAB Gavin Anderson drops one spot from 20 to 21, Prime International is ranked 49 (up from 52), Hallvarsson & Halvarsson is at 56 (56) and Diplomat PR at 159 (171).

Norwegian agency Geelmuyden.Kiese drops to 87 (78) and Pohjoisranta in Finland drops to 165 (117).

Full list in pdf.

Top 10 Swedish Public Relations and Communications Blogs

Cision has published a ranking of the top 10 PR and Communications blogs in Sweden and I’m proud to announce that I have two blogs on the list. This blog, Media Culpa, is ranked at #3 and my Swedish language blog Sociala Medier is ranked #10.

Congratulations to Johan Ronnestam who claimed the top spot, and to all the others on the list. Well deserved, all of you.

1. ronnestam.com

2. joinsimon

3. Media Culpa

4. SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

5. jardenberg unedited

6. FYRA NYANSER AV BRUNT

7. Doktor Spinn

8. bisonblog.se

9. Pers Värld

10. SOCIALA MEDIER

Similar lists from Cision include top PR blogs in Finland, Norway and the UK.

Findings from the Social Media and Online PR Report 2010

According to the Social Media and Online PR Report 2010 by Econsultancy and Bigmouthmedia, 95% of surveyed companies (mainly in the UK) have been involved in social media. But only 18% say they are heavily involved. 40% have experimented with social media but not done much.

The most common PR activities in social media are online traditional media relations (62%), press release posting sites and wire services (56%) adn blog relations (45%).

Other findings include:

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the most widely used external websites/services.
When asked how organisations are using Facebook, more than two thirds of companies (67%) are using Facebook as a marketing channel.
Around a quarter of company respondents (26%) said their most senior managers were “very interested indeed” in social media, compared to 19% who said there was “very little interest”.
Social network profile creation and management is still the most widely used social media tactic, although the proportion of companies who do this has decreased from 65% last year to 56% this year.
Direct traffic (72%) is still regarded as the most important metric for assessing social media activity. Almost three-quarters of respondents say this is one of the three most important metrics they use.
45% of responding companies don’t have any policies or guidelines for the use of social media.

A sample report can be found here.

Nordic communicators are lagging behind journalists in use of social media

PR practitioners and professional communicators at organizations and businesses are often experts in building good relations with journalists and other influencers that can help get their messages across to the target audience. Reading and monitoring traditional media has always been an essential part of the daily routines of PR professionals, we need to know who says what and where. With the strong growth in comsumption of social media, one would assume that most communicators had started to use social media by know, but according to a survey by Cision, there is still room for improvement.

Cision conducted a survey of journalists and professional communicators in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden about their attitudes to and use of social media. The survey revealed that journalists are becoming heavy users of social media such as blogs and micro blogs (like Twitter), especially in Sweden. As many as 42% of Swedish journalists and 26% of Danish journalists read blogs daily. In Norway and Finland the figure is slightly lower, 19% and 16%, respectively.

53% of Swedish journalists read blogs for research and 28% say that they blog as part of their work.

Twitter is a lot more popular among journalists in Norway and Sweden, where one in four read it daily (27% and 25%). In Finland, only 4% read micro blogs daily.

17% of Swedish journalist write on micro blogs daily. When asked “how do you work with micro blogs?”, 36% said that they monitor what is written, 36% follow interesting people, 25% publish news, 21% build relationships and 21% read for research.

Among communicators, it is more common to read blogs in Sweden and Denmark, at least on a daily basis.

Communicators in Sweden and Norway are the most frequent users of Twitter.

If we compare the use of blogs and Twitter between journalists and communcators in each country, we find that a larger percentage of journalists read blogs on a daily basis. This is quite interesting because it could signal that journalists are better connected to the blogosphere than professional communicators. And if as many as 53% of Swedish journalists read blogs for research (35% of Danish and 33% of Norwegian journalists) then communicators probably should put even more focus on building relations with bloggers.

Journalists are also more frequent readers of Twitter than communicators, with the exception of Finland. If for example 50% of Norwegian journalists read micro blogs at least weekly, why are only 32% of communicators doing the same? Shouldn’t they be out there to monitor and connect with influencers on Twitter? Well, I think so. Fortunately for communicators, there are people that they can turn to for advice, namely PR consultants (yes, people like me…). It turns out, not very suprising, that the individuals that uses social media most often are PR consultants. 52% of Swedish PR consultants read blogs daily, 50% in Norway and 35% in Finland (not enough responses in Denmark). As many as 61% of Norwegian PR consultants read Twitter daily, 34% in Sweden and 17% in Finland.

Footnote: The report Cision Social Media Survey 2010 can be downloaded here.

Tags: twitter, journalister, pr, sociala medier. Ping.